A(touch)ment: a smartphone extension for instantly
sharing visual and tactile experience.
Haruki Nakamura
Tokyo National College of Technology
1220-2, Kunigimachi, Hachioji, Tokyo,
193-0997, Japankanatakanata1996321@gmail.com+81-42-668-5111

Nobuhisa Hanamitsu
Kouta Minamizawa
Graduate school of Media Design, Keio University
4-1-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku, Yokohama, Kanagawa,
223-8526, Japan{hanamitsu, kouta}@kmd.keio.ac.jp+81- 45-564-2517

Figure 1. Recorded image thumbnails and tactile wave table

Figure 2. An iPhone with the a(touch)ment haptic device in use. Right: Examples of experiences that may
be captured and shared by recording video with accompanying tactile sensation using a(touch)ment.
Interaction styles.

ABSTRACT

Using social networks, users are able to share visual, audial
and audio-visual information by making use of theirsmartphone's built-in camera and microphone. However,up until now, the sharing of corresponding haptic
experiences has not been possible. Here we present a
haptic-information recording and displaying attachment for
smartphone, or 'a(touch)ment', that allows the user toinstantly record, as shown in fig.1, and share haptic
experiences, for example, in situations illustrated in fig. 2.

INTRODUCTION

The ability to record and share our experience via
photographs and video instantly over social networks has
become commonplace and easy. For example, a user onholiday can instantly share their holiday photos andexperiences at the touch of a button. The instant nature andease of sharing has proven to be an important feature ofsuch technologies, however up until now, what is able to beshared has been limited to audio and video content.

Author Keywords

However, it has been found that our subjective
experience is greatly influenced by the active-haptic
exploration of our environment [1]. Therefore, including
the ability to record and share those haptic experiences
via social network platforms may change and enrich ourinteractions on such services.

Haptic interface; haptic experience; haptic communication;
TECHTILE;
ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.2: User Interfaces: Haptic I/O, Theory and methods,
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With this in mind, our group has developed
TECHTILEtoolkit [2]. The device uses a microphone torecord vibro-tactile wave data. The data can be stored
and shared in any standard audio format, and cantherefore be shared using conventional social media
platforms such as YouTube. In a previous project,
TouchCast, in which a pen-shaped device was used torecord and playback 2D images of tactile texture

Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).
AH '15, Mar 09-11, 2015, Singapore, Singapore
ACM 978-1-4503-3349-8/15/03.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2735711.2735782

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fig. 4 and 5, the haptic information corresponding to thevideo can be experienced.

information, we identified that the body of tactile
information shared and available through online
platforms would increase [4]. Therefore, we made thedevice convenient for instant recording and sharing, bycreating a mobile attachment-type device.
Theexperience can then be uploaded to services such as
Youtube in addition to visual data, and shared withothers.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Figure 3: Appearance of a(touch)ment

In our life experience, should we find a nice haptic
experience that we would like to remember or share, thenusers of out device can conveniently use their mobile phonewith a(touch)ment to record such haptic experiences alongwith visual information. New possibilities of sharedexperience become possible through the recording andsharing of haptic information. Although our friends, forexample, were not in the same place with us at the time,they can experience the feeling of touch.

CONCLUSION

We presented a(touch)ment; a smartphone extension thatallows the instant sharing of visual and tactile experience.
The device enhances the experience of content shared onsocial media platforms by enabling the recording andsharing of tactile and visual information. For example, auser can record the haptic data at the same time asrecording a video of scratching a rough surface. We intend
to develop a sharing and search platform, in which users
can upload and find similar recorded haptic experiences.

IMPREMENTATION

A(touch)ment is a smartphone extension for sharing visualand tactile experience. As shown in Fig.3, the device
consists of a DCDC converter (LM2735), an audioamplifier (AMP15W-8006), a tactile microphone (PRIMOMX-M4758) that is able to capture frequencies as low as
approximately 10Hz, a voltage divider and a haptic actuator(Tactile Lab Haptuator Mark-II).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work is supported by Grant-in-Aid for Young
Scientists 26700018.
REFERENCES

1. Gibson, James J. "Observations on active touch."
Psychological review 69.6 (1962): 477.

To record a visual and tactile experience usinga(touch)ment, the user attaches an audio jack into asmartphone's audio terminal. The user can then record avisual and tactile experience by simultaneously capturing
the haptic data while using the phone as normal to record
video.
The head-phone terminal is used both formicrophone recording and earphone sound playback.
Therefore, in order to re-experience the haptic recording,the user can keep the device in the same configuration as
for recording. The haptic actuator in the back of thea(touch)ment device responds to the haptic-vibration datafrom the headphone terminal. The configuration is shown in

2. Minamizawa, Kouta, et al. "TECHTILEtoolkit: aprototyping tool for design and education of hapticmedia." Proceedings of the 2012 Virtual Reality
International Conference. ACM, 2012.
3. Takeuchi, Yuta, et al. "TouchCast: an on-line platform
for creation and sharing of tactile content based ontactile copy & paste." Adjunct proceedings of the 25th
annual ACM symposium on User interface software andtechnology. ACM, 2012.

Figure 4: A recorded visual and tactile experience: an electric fan cover

Figure 5: A recorded visual and tactile experience: a keyboard

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