RoboGraphics: Using Mobile Robots to Create Dynamic Tactile Graphics

Tactile graphics are a common way to present information to people with vision impairments. Tactile graphics can be used to explore a broad range of content including presenting data, telling stories, and conveying map information, but aren't well suited to representing dynamic or moving information. We introduce and demonstrate a new approach RoboGraphics for creating dynamic tactile graphics by combining static tactile overlays, touch screen tablets, and off-the-shelf tangible robots. To evaluate the RoboGraphics approach for conveying information to blind users, we created a set of reference applications, including an interface for exploring graph data, braille characters, the story of the tortoise and the hare, the analog clock, and the ruminant digestive process. A design probe demonstrated that haptic graphics can be used to help people with vision impairments explore data using the audio-tactile display.