Overview
Ultrasound haptic devices can create parametric audio as well as contactless haptic feedback. In a paper at the 2021 ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, I investigated if multimodal output from these devices can influence the perception of haptic feedback. I used a magnitude estimation experiment to evaluate perceived roughness of an ultrasound haptic pattern.
![](http://euanfreeman.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Experiment-1.png)
Results suggest that white noise audio from the haptics device increased perceived roughness and pure tones did not, and that lower rendering frequencies may increase perceived roughness.
![](http://euanfreeman.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Results-1024x1024.png)
Our results show that multimodal output has the potential to expand the range of sensations that can be presented by an ultrasound haptic device, paving the way to richer mid-air haptic interfaces.
Enhancing Ultrasound Haptics with Parametric Audio Effects
E. Freeman.
In Proceedings of 23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction – ICMI ’21, 692-696. 2021.
@inproceedings{ICMI2021AudioHaptic,
author = {Freeman, Euan},
booktitle = {{Proceedings of 23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction - ICMI '21}},
title = {{Enhancing Ultrasound Haptics with Parametric Audio Effects}},
year = {2021},
publisher = {ACM},
pages = {692--696},
doi = {10.1145/3462244.3479951},
url = {http://euanfreeman.co.uk/enhancing-ultrasound-haptics-with-parametric-audio-effects/},
pdf = {http://research.euanfreeman.co.uk/papers/ICMI_2021_AudioHaptic.pdf},
data = {https://zenodo.org/record/5144878},
}
Acknowledgements
This research has received funding from the 🇪🇺 European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement #737087. This work was completed as part of the Levitate project.
![](http://euanfreeman.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/UoG_colour-300x93.png)