Contactless Kinesthetic Feedback to Support Handwriting Using Magnetic Force

Georgios Korres, Wanjoo Park, Mohamad Eid

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Handwriting is a fundamental human skill that is essential for communication yet is one of the most complex skills to be mastered. Pen-based interaction with touchscreen devices are increasingly used in digital handwriting practices to simulate pen and paper experience, but are mostly based on auditory-visual feedback. Given that handwriting relies on visual and motor skills, haptic feedback is recently explored to augment audio-visual systems to further support the handwriting process. In this article, we present an assistive platform entitled KATIB (means writer in Arabic) that provides high fidelity kinesthetic feedback, in addition to audio-visual feedback, to support handwriting using magnetic forces. We propose novel contactless kinesthetic guidance methods, namely proactive and retroactive guidance, to guide the handwriting stylus along a desirable trajectory based on position control. Detaching the handwriting stylus from any mechanical device enables learners to have full control over grasping and moving at their own pace and style. The proposed platform is characterized for haptic interaction. Finally, a psychophysical experiment is conducted to validate that the kinesthetic guidance is perceivable and beneficial as a sensory feedback using a novel handwriting copy task. Contactless kinesthetic feedback seems to play a significant role in supporting digital handwriting by influencing the kinematics of the handwriting process.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)825-834
Number of pages10
JournalIEEE Transactions on Haptics
Volume14
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Haptic guidance
  • evaluation/methodology
  • handwriting assistive technologies
  • user-centered design

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Science Applications

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