Vibrotactile guidance cues for target identification

The current study examined the utilization of vibrotactile cues to guide an operator toward a target. Vibrotactile stimulation on the hand can provide spatially stabilizing cues for feedback of subtle changes in position. Once such feedback is present, a deviation from the point of origin results in tactile stimulation indicating the direction and magnitude of the positional error. Likewise, spatial deviations from a desired position displayed tactually can provide robust position guidance and stabilization sufficient to improve the acquisition time and accuracy of fine cursor control. A major advantage of this mean of information representation is that it can be present at the same time as the visual channel without interference. Furthermore, our findings suggest that performance is enhanced when both tactile and visual cuing are present. Though the literature suggests that various forms of tactile feedback can provide position guidance and stabilization, to our knowledge, no openly published research prior to the one presented here has detailed the effect of tactile feedback on target identification.