Kinesthetic-tactile communications

Machine aids to kinesthetic-tactile communication aim at maximizing the information-transfer rate from an external source to the human user. The display is the central problem. Source messages might be recoded into equal information units presented one at a time to the user, or a temporal or spatial display of the message may permit the user to recode the message perceptually into manageable units. The performance of these alternatives has been examined using a kinesthetic-tactile display for English text. This device consists of eight finger rests, each of which can move in 26 directions in three-dimensional space. Two methods of programming this device to present information were investigated. In the "traveling-wave" presentation, a three-dimensional traveling wave of finger movements moves across the display representing a sequence of symbols. This presentation is an example of the case in which the user recodes the source messages perceptually. In the "typewriter" presentation, the subject's fingers are moved corresponding to the way he would actively move them if he were typing. The latter proved to be the more effective, yielding a transmission rate of 4.5 bits/sec.