SBIR Phase I: Hybrid Haptic-Audio Touchpanels for Mobility

This Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Phase I project will demonstrate the value of multimodal haptic-audio displays for the mobile marketplace. As smartphones, PDA's and other mobile devices become both smaller and feature rich, visual feedback to the operator limits the bandwidth available for human computer interaction. It is well known that by enhancing visual cues with auditory and haptic feedback that operator performance on a variety of standard tasks is increased. The proposed innovation is a prototype system capable of producing tactile, audio and visual feedback. Immersion will explicitly study the value of different combinations of haptic and audio feedback using the prototype system. A virtual model, incorporating CAD geometry, physics models and user impedance will be implemented. The virtual model will then be validated both physically and perceptually using data obtained from the physical prototype. This validated theoretical model will in turn be used to understand how to overcome the required power, weight and volume constraints in the mobility marketplace. The proposed innovation will address the accessibility market by providing an important non-visual information channel between the user and the computer segment both for small format devices and more traditional displays. The international mobile marketplace, including cell phones, PDA's and handheld games, is well over 500 million units and continues to grow at a very high rate. Mobile wireless devices have become indispensable in 21st century business, with manufacturers such as Palm, Dell and HP frantically competing to provide the most features in the smaller and smaller form factors. In addition, the rise of the smartphone as a major portion of the PDA market dictates a much smaller form factor than traditional PDA devices, but with an awkward stylus interface. However the addition of multi-modal feedback has been demonstrated to improve performance and reduce pointing error in numerous studies, indicating that new, innovative technology capable of providing multi-modal feedback could become a necessary feature in this market.