The design and deployment of a wearable vibrotactile feedback system

We present work on the development and deployment of a wearable system for displaying vibrotactile stimuli at multiple locations on a person. This system is targeted as a general-purpose controller, with the flexibility to support many types of output devices, such as pager motors, muffin fans, and solenoids. We describe the deployment of one configuration of our system for use in the military, and discuss design changes we made that resulted from this deployment. Our major design goals include physical robustness, light weight, low power, and wireless communication. Once these goals are attained, we will explore the size of the "vocabulary" of cues that can be unambiguously identified by the wearer.