Top down view of a prototype motor unit (October 2008). Photo by Jon Bird.

Top down view of a prototype motor unit (October 2008). Photo by Jon Bird.

Minimal Tactile Vision Sensory Substitution (TVSS) System

Inspired by the pioneering work of Paul Bach-y-Rita, this prototype explores the minimal conditions under which vibration can usefully guide behaviour. Participants are blind folded and wear a head-mounted camera whose image is converted into patterns of stimulation in a vibrotactile array worn on their abdomen. Bach-y-Rita used hundreds of points of stimulation in his experiments, however we initially used six and found that this was sufficient for a simple ball tracking task.

October 2008

Prototype 1: Vibrating Moneybelt

Prototype 2: PWM controlled Vibration Motors

Prototype 3: Vibrotactile Belt

November 2008

Prototype 4: Head-mounted Webcam

Prototype 5: 2x3 Vibrotactile Corset

Prototype 6: Faster Image Processing using openFrameworks

December 2008

Prototype 7: Colour tracking

Prototype 8: Larger vibrotactile arrays using the TLC5940 chip

Prototype 9: Custom PCBs and a 4x4 Vibrotactile Array


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