Sonic Touch: A Haptic Toolkit for Fast Vibrotactile Prototyping

Oren D Ronen, and Marcelo Wanderley

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

In the realm of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs), tactile feedback typically inherent in acoustic instruments is notably absent, creating a gap in the sensory experience of musicians. Previous works typically aimed at bridging this gap by designing haptic effects using trial-and-error strategies. This paper introduces Sonic Touch, a toolkit developed in Max/MSP that facilitates the rapid prototyping of audio-driven vibrotactile haptic effects. The toolkit allows users to design a variety of haptic effects by manipulating parameters like wave type, vibration duration, frequency, repetition, and envelope, then store and manage them in buffers for output. The toolkit’s architecture is grounded in a modular, building-block approach, accessible through a simple graphical user interface. Practical use of this toolkit is demonstrated through two examples, first designing a haptic tremolo effect, and second augmenting a Touché controller with vibrotactile feedback.

Citation:

Oren D Ronen, and Marcelo Wanderley. 2024. Sonic Touch: A Haptic Toolkit for Fast Vibrotactile Prototyping. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13904961

BibTeX Entry:

  @article{nime2024_87,
 abstract = {In the realm of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs), tactile feedback typically inherent in acoustic instruments is notably absent, creating a gap in the sensory experience of musicians. Previous works typically aimed at bridging this gap by designing haptic effects using trial-and-error strategies. This paper introduces Sonic Touch, a toolkit developed in Max/MSP that facilitates the rapid prototyping of audio-driven vibrotactile haptic effects. The toolkit allows users to design a variety of haptic effects by manipulating parameters like wave type, vibration duration, frequency, repetition, and envelope, then store and manage them in buffers for output. The toolkit’s architecture is grounded in a modular, building-block approach, accessible through a simple graphical user interface. Practical use of this toolkit is demonstrated through two examples, first designing a haptic tremolo effect, and second augmenting a Touché controller with vibrotactile feedback.},
 address = {Utrecht, Netherlands},
 articleno = {87},
 author = {Oren D Ronen and Marcelo Wanderley},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.13904961},
 editor = {S M Astrid Bin and Courtney N. Reed},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {September},
 numpages = {4},
 pages = {598--601},
 presentation-video = {https://youtu.be/UrmL3P7FdoU?si=UZK6e26GzsHQXfS5},
 title = {Sonic Touch: A Haptic Toolkit for Fast Vibrotactile Prototyping},
 track = {Papers},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2024/nime2024_87.pdf},
 year = {2024}
}