Paper Reading #14- TeslaTouch: electrovibration for touch surfaces

Title: TeslaTouch: electrovibration for touch surfaces
Reference Information:
Olivier Bau, Ivan Poupyrev, Ali Israr, and Chris Harrison. "TeslaTouch: electrovibration for touch surfaces". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010 ISBN: 978-1-4503-0271-5.
Author Bios:
Olivier Bau- He is currently a PostDoctoral Research Scientist at Disney Research in Pittsburgh in the Interaction Design group with Ivan Poupyrev. He received his PhD in Computer Science (HCI) at INRIA Saclay, working within the In|Situ| team with Wendy Mackay.
Ivan Poupyrev- He is currently a Senior Research Scientist at Disney Research Pittsburgh, a unit of Walt Disney Imagineering. There he directs an interaction technology group which focuses on inventing and exploring new interactive technologies for future entertainment and digital lifestyles
Ali Israr- He is currently working with the Interaction Design @ Disney group in Disney Research, The Walt Disney Company, USA.
Chris Harrison- He's a a fifth year Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University advised by Scott Hudson. He's also a Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellow and editor-in-chief of XRDS, ACM's flagship magazine for students.
Summary:

• Hypothesis: If the authors can integrate electrovibration into an interactive surface, then many features of tactible input will be unlocked for the user to experience with TeslaTouch.
• Methods: In order to allow the transparent electrode to work, a basic circuit board is used to induce electricity for the interactions. No actual voltage is passed through the user (who is assumed to be grounded), and only a minimal current is passed (an amount considered safe for humans to be "charged" with). This TeslaTouch technology is just an "add-on" to current touchscreen / interactive devices already existing. The authors conducted experiments with trial users in order to obtain initial feedback results on the initial implementation on TeslaTouch.
• Results: The studies conducted by the authors indicated that low frequency interactions were perceived as "rougher" relative to the higher frequency interactions. The effect of amplitude on the interactions depended on the frequency- the higher the frequency and amplitude simultaneously resulted in "smoother" interactions versus high amplitude, low frequency interactions being repotred as "stickier". The results were analyzed by the authors to determine the JNDs (just noticeable differences) between interactions and to determine what the borderline was between pleasurahle and discomforting levels of interactions.
• Conents: The authors set out to create a new way of interacting on surfaces that would reap more benefits than traditional mechanical vibrotactile systems. They created "electrovibration" techniques that would differ based on the interaction type (dragging a file, erasing part of a picture, etc). After testing, the authors calculated what optimal levels of frequency and amplitude were appropriate for each interaction and also what appropriate levels of each were to obtain maximal pleasure from human touch with each interaction.

Discussion:
I like the idea of this technology, but I kind of got a little bored with the paper because this feels like the 5th paper in a row we had to report on multitouch surface devices. It is a cool idea, but I consider this technology an "add-on" to existing technologies if you want more options or different feedback mechanisms. What I got out of this paper was that TeslaTouch on an interactive surface is similar to playing Nintendo64 with a Rumble Pack. I believe the authors achieved their goals, but still (admittedly) had room to improve and could apply this technology to new applications for future projects. This is expandable for sure, and can definitely be used primarily instead of secondarily (from what I understood) on interactive surface devices in the future.