OMAR a haptic display for speech perception by deaf and deaf-blind individuals

A system for haptic (i.e. kinesthetic and cutaneous) stimulation of the hand is described. While the immediate application involves display of speech information, a number of other man-machine interface applications may be feasible, including force-feedback devices for computer interaction and human pattern extraction from multiple datastreams. In an attempt to model more closely the information streams available via the Tadoma method, OMAR was developed to stimulate kinesthetic as well as tactile receptors, by moving and vibrating fingers in one or two dimensions using hard-disk head-positioning actuators. OMAR is being used in experiments involving basic haptic perception and supplementation of speechreading with haptic codings of speech correlates obtained via X-ray microbeam measurements