Abstract

The goal of the TETMOST project was to make Art more accessible to Visually Impaired People. The project had two main axes: (1) researching and experimenting to find the most intuitive way to transcode an image into haptic sensations whilst retaining its original meaning and peculiarities, and (2) developping a novel haptic interface allowing VIP to explore images with their fingers.

Article (ICCHP’18) Article (ICISP’20) Poster

1 Introduction

To Be Filled

1.1 Exploring existing haptic interfaces

We researched and tried different categories of haptic interfaces in order to asses their strengths and weaknesses for our purposes:

Photo of the StimTACT interface — (a) Taxel mechanical interfaces

Photo of the Hap2U interface — (a) Taxel mechanical interfaces

Our experience with the existing categories of haptic interfaces allowed us to designed one best adapted to our need: the Force-Feedback Tablet (F2T)

2 Outcomes

2.1 Our interface: F2T (v1)

The first prototype of the F2T was assembled with legos and a camera to better asses the position of the joystick within the frame of the device.

2.2 Software tools

1) We developed a Java application to create or convert images into simplified tactile representations, which can then be explored using the F2T:

2) In order to display an image haptically, we first needed a way to simplify the image’s content without losing its meaning. To do so, we explored various Computer Vision techniques such as image segmentation and edge detection:

3 My role in this project

1) Participated in the development of a Java app to control the F2T and display tactile “images”.

2) Investigated existing haptic interfaces, classifying them based on our needs, and buying/lending a prototype from each category.

3) Organized experimental evaluations with VIP to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each category of interfaces.

4) Participated in writing a poster and two conference articles: one on the F2T, and one on the image segmentation.