Designing Interactive Shoes for Tactile Augmented Reality

Augmented Footwear has become an increasingly common research area. However, as this is a comparatively new direction in HCI, researchers and designers are not able to build upon common platforms. We discuss the design space of shoes for augmented tactile reality, focussing on physiological and biomechanical factors as well as technical considerations. We present an open source example implementation from this space, intended as an experimental platform for vibrotactile rendering and tactile AR and provide details on experiences that could be evoked with such a system. Anecdotally, the new prototype provided experiences of material properties like compliance, as well as altered perception of their movements and agency. We intend our work to lower the barrier of entry for new researchers and to support the field of tactile rendering in footwear in general by making it easier to compare results between studies.