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PROGRAMMABLE BUTTON
with augmented vibrotactile sensations

Augmenting Physical Buttons with Vibrotactile Feedback for Programmable Feels
ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'20)
ABSTRACT
Physical buttons provide clear haptic feedback when pressed and released, but their responses are unvarying. Physical buttons can be powered by force actuators to produce unlimited click sensations, but the cost is substantial. An alternative can be augmenting physical buttons with simple and inexpensive vibration actuators. When pushed, an augmented button generates a vibration overlayed on the button’s original kinesthetic response, under the general framework of haptic augmented reality. We explore the design space of augmented buttons while changing vibration frequency, amplitude, duration, and envelope. We then visualize the perceptual structure of augmented buttons by estimating a perceptual space for 7 physical buttons and 40 augmented buttons. Their sensations are also assessed against adjectives, and results are mapped into the perceptual space to identify meaningful perceptual dimensions. Our results contribute to understanding the benefits and limitations of programmable vibration-augmented physical buttons with emphasis on their feels.
FULL CITATION
Chaeyong Park, Jinhyuk Yoon, Seungjae Oh, and Seungmoon Choi. 2020. Augmenting Physical Buttons with Vibrotactile Feedback for Programmable Feels. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '20). ACM, 1–14. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3379337.3415837
FIGURES
(Teaser image) The force response of a physical button is augmented with a vibration generated by an actuator. This simple technology affords a variety of distinct and programmable feels to one physical button.
The overall design of our augmented button hardware. Both the cap and housing were 3D printed using polylactide flament. The housing also contains a voice coil type vibration actuator (Haptuator BM3C, Tactile Labs) clenched by bolt binding.
Acceleration and force profles visualizing the effects of vibration augmentation on physical button click. The top row shows the responses of the physical button itself, and the rest is for augmented ones.
Forty vibration waveforms for button augmentation. Each waveform is represented by a number and a code of parameter values: Frequency (40, 100, 250, 400)-Envelope (R25, R50, R100, DS100, DF100)-Amplitude (F, H). Each notation will be used depending on adequacy.
The result of user experiment 1. 2D perceptual space of the 47 augmented and physical buttons. The star represents the base physical button #41 without vibration feedback. Groups found by hierarchical clustering are represented by the same colors and symbols.
The result of user experiment 2. Adjective pairs regressed into the 2D perceptual space. The length of each axis is proportional to the R2 value of the regression, indicating the degree of fit.