English

Feasibility of Smartphone Vibrations as a Sensory Diagnostic Tool

Human-Computer Interaction 2022-06-22 v1

Abstract

Traditionally, clinicians use tuning forks as a binary measure to assess vibrotactile sensory perception. This approach has low measurement resolution, and the vibrations are highly variable. Therefore, we propose using vibrations from a smartphone to deliver a consistent and precise sensory test. First, we demonstrate that a smartphone has more consistent vibrations compared to a tuning fork. Then we develop an app and conduct a validation study to show that the smartphone can precisely measure a user's absolute threshold. This finding motivates future work to use smartphones to assess vibrotactile perception, allowing for increased monitoring and widespread accessibility.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2206.10309,
  title  = {Feasibility of Smartphone Vibrations as a Sensory Diagnostic Tool},
  author = {Rachel A. G. Adenekan and Alexis J. Lowber and Bryce N. Huerta and Allison M. Okamura and Kyle T. Yoshida and Cara M. Nunez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.10309},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

3 pages, 1 figure, work-in-progress paper published in EuroHaptics Conference, 2022