Haptigo: Seeing Through Touch

Project 2 Issue Date: October 4, 2011
Project 2 Due Date : October 18, 2011

Problem Statement:
Haptic feedback is a mode of providing information through touch. Wearable haptic devices can be effective for communicating with the environment around you. This project has two parts in it: one that is pre-defined, and one that is defined by you.  In the predefined part of the project, you are to direct a person through a maze using only tactile directional feedback. You will use wearable Arduino / LilyPad chips that are physically connected to vibro-actuators that are sewn (by you) into clothing, and connect through Bluetooth to an Android phone for controlling it.  In the second part of the project, you can use haptic feedback in your own creative way.

Solution Components: 
The solution for this problem contains four parts
Defining the environment - For any given problem, it is important to define the environment to understand the effects of our vibro - tactile feedback mechanism. Controlling/ defining the environment enables us eliminate any external variable that might affect the experiment. For this project, define a virtual maze. Design a simple maze using Java/ Android application.

Note : The maze should not be visible. The user should be directed using vibro - tactile feedback.
Defining the meaning for vibro - tactile feedback - It is important to have a clear mapping between actions and feedback. Usability of a product highly depends on the mapping. In other words, it should be easy to learn the mapping between action and the feedback for any user. In this project, the part of solution is to think about the following

1. Where would you place the vibro - tactile actuators? Some suggested options - palm of hands, waist belt.
2. How close to obstacle would you need to be to trigger vibro - tactile feedback?
3. When surrounded by obstactles, would the vibro - tactile feedback visualize the obstacles or will visualize the non - obstacle area? In other words, how do you encode the space around the user. 
4. Application that uses the above knowledge - Combining the information from the above, build an android application. The application/ game will define a maze, set defined targets to be achieved by user, track a user through the maze and provide vibro - tactile feedback for the obstacles.
5. Evaluation - Define an evaluation criteria that would measure the performance of a user. For example, Time taken to cross the maze could be a variable to measure user’s success. 

Project Evaluation Criteria:
Your project will be evaluated based on your project report and the working model.The following factors should be discussed in the project report

1. Design considerations for maze (number of obstructions, picture of virtual maze.
2. Comprehensive explanation about the choices you made for mapping the actions to the vibro - tactile feedback. That is, How do you feedback about the obstacles. 
3. Explain the application developed with good set of visuals/ snapshots.
4. Evaluation method - give an elaborate explanation that you would use to evaluate the application. 
5. Define some hypothesis? What do you think would be the output if a user uses your application.