Wearable Vibrotactile System as an Assistive Technology Solution.

The sense of touch can be used for acquiring visual/auditory information through tactile stimuli. Sensory augmentation and substitution often require the extensive training of subjects, leading to exhaustion and frustration over time. In this paper, we present a vibrotactile device for delivering customizable spatiotemporal tactile patterns to be used as a promising method in relaying information through the skin. The proposed system is able to generate stimuli where both vibration frequency and amplitude can be modulated. The results prove that this assistive technology solution can be beneficial and efficient not only for delivering complex feedback, but also for people with some level of sensory impairment or total disability e.g. blind, color-blind or deaf people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]