Research Tasks for the Summer

Tactile Display Using Electrovibration

Since both of you will be on trips during the summer, I just attached the following technical papers and a program for you to study. Papers are extremely concise and difficult to read. Normally it will take several runs just to fully understand a paragraph. You will also need to refer to the reference to understand some details. As you read through the papers, extract the key logic and concepts of the paper, mark the unknown terms or problems for further study, and continue reading to the end of the paragraph. Then, do some side research on those terms or problems, and re-read the paragraph again. Repeat this process at every level of your study until you fully understand (if possible) the paper. You are encouraged to read more papers on the Project Resource page after you finish the assigned ones. I may also work on the similar project at the City College during the summer. Contact me when you are back to the city for further updates. As far as the iOS App, try to read and understand the code. You will have to modify or write a better one yourselves!

1. Electrovibration: How to Create a 2D Tactile Display System for the Visually Impaired People Based on Electrovibration? (2014), Chin-Sung Lin. [14 pages] The paper provides an overview of the electrovibriation technology, and describe and summarize the current project status. Survey and analyzes the related patents. Learn the design and implementation of a 2D tactile system, and find out what are the open challenges. 
2. Kurt A. Kaczmarek, Krishnakant Nammi, Abhishek K. Agarwal, Mitchell E. Tyler, Steven J. Haase, and David J. Beebe, “Polarity Effect in Electrovibration forTactile Display”, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 53, No. 10, October 2006. [8 pages] The paper compares the mathematical models of the electrovibration, and discusses the effects of pulse polarity. Should also pay attention to how they conduct the experiments.
3. Olivier Bau, Ivan Poupyrev, Ali Israr, and Chris Harrison, “TeslaTouch- Electrovibrationfor Touch Surfaces”, UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 2010. [10 pages] The paper explains the design and implementation of a 2D tactile system based on the electrovibration. It also discuss the evaluation of the system and the subject test.
4. Olivier Bau and Ivan Poupyrev “REVEL: Tactile Feedback Technology forAugmented Reality”, ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 31, No. 4, Article 89, Publication Date: July 2012. [11 pages] The paper introduce an innovative scheme called "Reverse Electrovibration". It describes the implementation of such system in details, and also describes its potential applications in augmented reality (AR). 
5. Seung-Chan Kim, Ali Israr, and Ivan Poupyrev, “Tactile Rendering of 3D Features onTouch Surfaces”, UIST’13, October  2013. The paper presents a tactile rendering algorithm for rendering 3D geometric shapes on a touch screen surface by modulating friction force between user's finger and the touch screen. 

 Implementation

1. Ye-Sheng Kuo, Thomas Schmid, and Prabal Dutta, “Hijacking Power and Bandwidth from the Mobile Phones Audio Interface”, ISLPED’10 Design Contest, August 2010. [6 pages] The paper shows how to harvest power from a mobile device, and how to communicate the data through the audio port. Currently, we are using the audio channel to send out the electrovibration waveforms from iPad. So, this paper is highly relevant to what we did.

iOS Programming

1. CitiTouch (the link will be available soon), Chin-Sung Lin, 2014. An iPad App to evaluate the electrovibration phenomena. The user can experiment and select different frequency and amplitude to match the proper texture. You should read and understand the program first and then we can modify and improve it.

Please take electronic notes while you are studying the materials, watching the videos, or browsing through the web. Each team will present their learning later in the summer meeting.