Preliminary evaluation of podotactile feedback in sighted and blind users

This paper presents preliminary work towards the evaluation of an on-shoe tactile display that enables users to obtain information through the sense of touch of their feet. A series of experiments were designed to determine the performances of 20 healthy sighted and 5 blind voluntary subjects. Tests evaluated the perception of simple shapes, patterns, and directional instructions. Results show that some information is discriminable and that tactile-foot stimulation could be used for a wide number of applications in human-machine interaction. In particular, results suggest that the blind perform better in some key tasks and that it is feasible to exploit podotactile feedback for mobility and navigation assistance of the blind.