Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

It is known that direct manual cues, such as touching an interlocutor's face while they talk, can enhance the intelligibility of their speech. We aim to investigate the feasibility of using vibrotactile feedback to enhance speech intelligibility in acoustically noisy environments. We utilize a 1-DOF vibrotactile transducer to deliver vibrations that are coupled to features of the speech signal, such as its amplitude envelope or voicing (when the vocal folds are vibrating). Demonstrating the efficacy of a 1-DOF vibrotactile device is desirable since a significant number of people already own a 1-DOF vibrotactile device such as a cellphone, and it could be conceivably integrated into these everyday objects.