The HAPTIC TOUCH Toolkit: Enabling Exploration of Haptic Interactions

Abstract

In the real world, touch based interaction relies on haptic feedback (e.g., grasping objects, feeling textures). Unfortunately, such feedback is absent in current tabletop systems. The previously developed Haptic Tabletop Puck (HTP) aims at supporting experimentation with and development of inexpensive tabletop haptic interfaces. The problem is that programming the HTP is difficult due to interactions when coding its multiple hardware components. To address this problem, we contribute the HAPTICTOUCH toolkit, which allows developers to rapidly prototype haptic tabletop applications. Our toolkit is structured in three layers that enable programmers to: (1) directly control the device, (2) create customized combinable haptic behaviors (e.g. softness, oscillation), and (3) use visuals (e.g., shapes, images, buttons) to quickly make use of the aforementioned behaviors. Our preliminary study found that programmers could use the HAPTICTOUCH toolkit to create haptic tabletop applications in a short amount of time.