OMAR - A Haptic Display for Speech Perception by Deaf and Deaf-blind Individuals

A system for haptic (i.e. kinesthetic and cutaneous) stimulation of the hand is described. While our immediate application involves display of speech information, a number of other man-machine interface applications may be feasible, including force-feedback devices for computer interaction and human pattern extraction from multiple datastreams. Our work is motivated by the observation that devices for conveying speech to deaf-blind or deaf individuals via tactile stimulation have not attained nearly the level of benefit demonstrated by some deaf-blind individuals using the Tadoma method of haptic speech reception. The Tadoma user places a hand on the talker’s face to sense various speech articulatory motions. In an attempt to model more closely the information streams available via Tadoma, OMAR was developed to stimulate kinesthetic as well as tactile receptors, by moving and vibrating fingers in one or two dimensions using hard-disk head-positioning actuators. OMAR is being used in experiments involving basic haptic perception and supplementation of speechreading with haptic codings of speech correlates obtained via x-ray microbeam measurements.