Effect of Tactile Display in Visually Guiding Input Device

In this paper we propose a remote touch screen (RTS) as an application for flexible tactile array units. RTS is a combination of a flexible tactile display, a camera, a conventional touch screen and a monitor. While the user may press a button shown on the monitor under the touch screen in a conventional touch monitor configuration, in RTS, the user may press a button that is felt and shown. For visual guidance the user´s hand motion is captured by an overhead camera, and is merged with the screen menu image and shown on the monitor. For tactual guidance, a tactile pattern is provided at the center of the button locations shown on the monitor. Hence the user´s button pressing motion is visually as well as tactually guided in RTS configuration. To confirm the effectiveness of tactile display units in RTS, experiments were performed with and without the tactile display units