Follow the Force: Steering the Index Finger towards Targets using EMS Late-Breaking Works: Novel Interactions / Kaul, Oliver Beren / Pfeiffer, Max / Rohs, Michael Extended Abstracts of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016-05-07 v.2 p.2526-2532
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Summary: In mobile contexts guidance towards objects is usually done through the visual channel. Sometimes this channel is overloaded or not appropriate. A practicable form of haptic feedback is challenging. Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) can generate mobile force feedback but has a number of drawbacks. For complex movements several muscles need to be actuated in concert and a feedback loop is necessary to control movements. We present an approach that only requires the actuation of six muscles with four pairs of electrodes to guide the index finger to a 2D point and let the user perform mid-air disambiguation gestures. In our user study participants found invisible, static target positions on top of a physical box with a mean 2D deviation of 1.44 cm from the intended target.