Vibrator Transparency: Re-using Vibrotactile Signal Assets for Different Black Box Vibrators without Re-designing

Abstract

When an input command signal designed with one vibrator is reused with another vibrator with different frequency characteristics, there is a problem that the output vibration will differ. Therefore, we propose the concept of "vibrator transparency." We define the "vibrator transparent system" as a control system that absorbs the difference in vibrator environments’ frequency characteristics. The output vibration of the system does not depend on the change of the vibrator environment but depends only on the input signal. Therefore, with this system, it is possible to reproduce the output vibration by only reusing the input signals from vibrotactile signal assets. Inside the system, an adaptation process for the input signal is automatically executed. To prove the feasibility of this concept, we verified the reproducibility of vibration through both objective metrics and user study. It was proved that the proposed system significantly improved the reproducibility of the vibrations compared with the conventional system for any vibrators and any input signals.