A Wearable Force Feedback Toolkit with Electrical Muscle Stimulation

Abstract

Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) is a promising wearable haptic output technology as it can be miniaturized and delivers a wide range of tactile and force output. However, prototyping EMS applications is currently challenging and requires detailed knowledge about EMS. We present a toolkit that simplifies prototyping with EMS and serves as a starting point for experimentation and user studies. It consists of (1) a hardware control module that uses off-the-shelf EMS devices as safe signal generators, (2) a simple communication protocol, and (3) a set of control applications for prototyping. The interactivity allows hands-on experimentation with our sample control applications.