What it does
VirtX is a garment primarily designed for the hearing impaired to provide them a full-body virtual tactile experience. Fueled by electrotactile rendering technology, VirtX can render various tactile sensations without any discomfort.
Your inspiration
WHO states that about 0.1% of the global population has severe hearing loss, making hearing aids ineffective. As haptics and HCI researchers, we understand touch's importance for visual or hearing impaired people. Hearing is crucial for daily experience and we want to find a solution for them. Thus, as inventor, our goal is to convert sound waves into a full-body tactile experience using textile-based electro-tactile technology. This provides localized tactile feedback synchronized with sound’s intensity, frequency, and spatial attributes, embedded in everyday clothing and allows the hearing-impaired to "embrace sound" in silence.
How it works
Our design features electrotactile and e-textile technology. Traditional tactile technologies leverage mechanical stimuli that activate skin mechanoreceptors, triggering sensory neuron action potentials to CNS for tactile perception. We use transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), which directly stimulates sensory neurons with electrodes, bypassing mechanical conversion for precise, low-power, silent, and durable tactile experiences. Through advanced electrical stimulus adjustments, it creates realistic tactile sensations while preventing activation of pain-inducing A-δ fibers, ensuring genuine and pain-free experiences. The electrotactile technology is imbedded into a novel e-textile to fit for daily wearing. We utilize a multi-layer weave structure, enabling electrode arrays containing warp and weft electrodes isolated by non-conductive yarns. In addition, there is also a multi-electrode control system to manage all electrodes across the body.
Design process
Our research team went through below design milestones: Phase 1: We envisioned a fabric acting as a "tactile screen," displaying various tactile sensations and patterns. After 6 months, we rendered pinprick, touch, tapping, and pressure sensations—on a 5x5 cm fabric, and developed 20 dynamic and static pattern examples. This marked the prototype of our "textile electro-tactile interface."Phase 2: We refined the textile structure and collaborated with fabric factories for large-scale production, integrating electro-tactile fabric into existing manufacturing processes for cost-effective mass production. During the process, we again improved our technology with better resolution, tactile quality, and system stability as a result. Phase 3: The challenge is how to make this special fabric into clothing, which means to deal with the power wires and to reduce the size of the powering devices. We developed a shift-register-based control architecture using five serial lines for electrode control, with several sub-segment of power devices that can magnetically attaching to the back, arms, and legs.Phase 4: We optimized the development ecosystem with callable control code and developer debugging tools, enabling VirtX's versatile applications and seamless integration with computing devices.
How it is different
In the realm of helping the hearing-impaired experience sound, many designers use visualisation tools (such as Touchdesigner) to convert sound into visuals or employ mixed reality glasses to "see" sound. However, VirtX differentiates itself by focusing on haptics. It pioneers a full-body perceptual interface. VirtX delivers an unprecedented level of tactile richness while preserving the feeling of other senses. Tactile rendering devices in the market nowadays typically use vibration for feedback. These devices often offer limited tactile types, low resolution, and are bulky and noisy during operation. VirtX excels with advanced tactile effects. By seamlessly integrating electrodes into textiles, it achieves a outstanding resolution of 1mm, enabling lightweight, flexible tactile rendering and supporting scalable production. This breakthrough represents a significant contribution of our project.
Future plans
Next, we will improve VirtX to be even lighter and more integrated, embedding input and sensory capabilities to complete a hardware-based interactive loop. We are also gathering developers to create applications that enhance the lives of the hearing and visual impaired utilizing VirtX, such as for transportation, safety alerts, and even "music experiences". We envision to develop open source tools that allow more developers joining us in making life more connected for people with disabilities. Last but not least, we believe VirtX also have potential in the gaming industry, which we are contacting local companies for further collaborations.
Awards
1. Excellent Graduation Project of Tongji University (Thesis) 2. Goldreed Industrial Design Award (Nominated, Finals in Progress)
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