design guide(lines)
This design guide for [Project Lyta can help in checking how technological and design decisions relate to a common conceptual framework.
… This needs to be moulded into a proper shape, but here are some introductory notes
Before reading further, try this: take a sheet of paper or a thick fabric. Try touching something, or better someone through this primitive interface. What do you notice first? what makes it exciting to keep exploring?
mlf/zzk: dynamics seems crucial. rapid changes in pressure and texture as well as temperature appeared more important than the size of surface displacement that would reveal the shape. If the shape protruded more, we were less focused on the action of touching, and more on rationally guessing what the shape might be….
What is it?
A remote touch generator. An interface for touching on a distance.
TOUCH: what is touch in the context of lyta?
The most distributed human sense, by which pressure or traction exerted on the skin is recognized; the sense by which the properties of bodies are determined by contact; the tactile sense.
The faculty of touch; “only sight and touch enable us to locate objects in the space around us”
But more importantly, we are interested in touch as action:
To come in contact with; to hit or strike lightly against; to extend the hand, foot, or the like, so as to reach or rest on.
To affect the senses or the sensibility of; to move; to melt; to soften
To strike; to manipulate; to play on; as, to touch an instrument of music.
To be in contact; to be in a state of junction, so that no space is between
The act of touching, or the state of being touched; contact
TOUCH: Why do we want to touch something/someone?
TOUCH: What qualities can we perceive exclusively through the tactile sense?
Information about a surface, though the direct contact with the surface: )
shape (in 2d and 3d)
texture
temperature
humidity
DYNAMICS: The sense of touch is ultimately the sense of change, modification of the surface properties through time.
TOUCH: qualities that other senses can perceive when a surface is touched:
-⇒ can we sense the difference between touching a real person and touching a computer simulation?
GENERATOR: what stimuli do we need to generate the feeling of touch?
Ideally, we would have actuation of all of the following properties of the surface:
Texture, through tactile stimuli (smoothness/roughness, slipperiness/stickyness)
Shape, through surface displacement/force feedback (hardness/softness, thickness, flexibility)
Temperature, through local change of temperature (hot/cold)
Humidity, through change of local surface humidity (wet/dry)
and to add to the synaesthetic experience, we can actuate:
Colour, through local change of the light frequency (visual image of the touched object)
Sound, through the sonification of the texture data (additional information about the textural structure of the surface)
However, we will most probably have to discard actuating humidity and temperature because of the current state of the art in understanding these properties. Sound will not be used due to the 'noisiness' of the space where the installation will be placed in Phaeno.
This leaves the actuation of texture and shape as two modes to be combined for representation of remote touch. Colour could be added to enchance the visual impact of the touch, as well as to add to the experience of the people who are not touching the surface (considering that it is a public space…).
Pressure
Stretch
Geometric Deformation
Resistance
GENERATOR: output: what characteristics of the stimuli can we modify?
Tactile feedback (electrocutaneous/vibrotactile: pneumatic, piezo-electric, SMA/SMP/SMC, EAP)
resistance
pressure
gradient
resolution
frequency (bandwidth)
speed
Force feedback (pneumatic, electromagnetic, piezo-electric, SMA/SMP/SMC, EAP, magnetostrictive, hydraulic)
displacement gradient
resolution
speed
distance range
Chromatic actuation
brightness
resolution
density
spectral gradient
REMOTE TOUCH GENERATOR: what do we want people to experience