Kinesthetic-tactile communications

Machine aids to kinesthetic-tactile communication aim at maximizing the information-transfer rate from an external source to the human user. The display is the central problem. Source messages might be recoded into equal information units presented one at a time to the user, or a temporal or spatial display of the message may permit the user to recode the message perceptually into manageable units. The performance of these alternatives has been examined using a kinesthetic-tactile display for English text. This device consists of eight finger rests, each of which can move in 26 directions in three-dimensional space. Two methods of programming this device to present information were investigated. In the "traveling-wave" presentation, a three-dimensional traveling wave of finger movements moves across the display representing a sequence of symbols. This presentation is an example of the case in which the user recodes the source messages perceptually. In the "typewriter" presentation, the subject\´s fingers are moved corresponding to the way he would actively move them if he were typing. The latter proved to be the more effective, yielding a transmission rate of 4.5 bits/sec.