Traveling vibrotactile wave based on a haptic processor

Recently, mobile device users experience a variety of graphical content from a simple static object to an object having complex dynamic behavior. A user who manipulates and plays with these ‘objects’ wants to haptically ‘feel’ the presence of a static object or the motions of dynamic objects. To satisfy the demand, we previously proposed a vibrotactile rendering method based on the vibrotactile traveling wave. Even though the proposed method can haptically simulate the dynamic behavior of a target object, it is not easy to delicately generate a traveling vibrotactile wave. The reason is that the sampling rate of the haptic loop in the system determines the performance of the traveling vibrotactile wave. Therefore, this paper proposes a haptic processor which can control multiple motors and create a traveling vibrotactile wave for mobile devices. Furthermore, we develop a game system in the mobile platform where a player haptically senses traveling vibrotactile waves.