M-Hair: Creating novel tactile feedback by augmenting the body hair to respond to magnetic field

R Boldu, S Jain, JP Forero Cortes, H Zhang… - Proceedings of the …, 2019 - dl.acm.org
Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and …, 2019dl.acm.org
In this paper, we present M-Hair, a novel method for providing tactile feedback by stimulating
only the body hair without touching the skin. It works by applying passive magnetic materials
to the body hair, which is actuated by external magnetic fields. Our user study suggested that
the value of the M-hair mechanism is in inducing affective sensations such as pleasantness,
rather than effectively discriminating features such as shape, size, and direction. This work
invites future research to use this method in applications that induce emotional responses or …
In this paper, we present M-Hair, a novel method for providing tactile feedback by stimulating only the body hair without touching the skin. It works by applying passive magnetic materials to the body hair, which is actuated by external magnetic fields. Our user study suggested that the value of the M-hair mechanism is in inducing affective sensations such as pleasantness, rather than effectively discriminating features such as shape, size, and direction. This work invites future research to use this method in applications that induce emotional responses or affective states, and as a research tool for investigations of this novel sensation.
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