Tactile Interface for Navigation in Underground Mines

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a tactile vocabulary to aid navigation in an underground mine. We studied different ways to construct tactile vocabularies and assessed several tactile icons for aid navigation. After trying a dozen stimuli families, we have selected tactons based on the users´ ability to perceive and process them during navigation in virtual environments to design a more usable tactile interface. Then, we performed a user experiment in a virtual simulation of an emergency situation in an underground mine. The user study shows that the tactile feedback facilitated the execution of the task. Also, the perceptual adjustment of the tactile vocabulary increased its usability as well as the memorization of its signals.