My name is Roger and today I will be presenting MAGHair
A wearable system to create a unique tactile feedback by stimulating only the body hair
Existing haptic technologies are capable of rendering complex haptic sensations
Such as force or squeezing. However, they face difficulties when it comes to pleasure and social touch.
We sense haptics through our skin and our skin is composed by multiple mechanoreceptors
Which enable us to perceive different sensations such as temperature or vibrations
In specific, there is one type called ct afferent, which has been previously related to pleasant and social touch
These ones are located at the hair follicle,
and the best way to stimulate them is through hair follicle deflexion at about 3cm/s
Inspired by this, our previous work explores how to generate a haptic sensation by stimulating only the body hair
This was achieved by augmenting the body hair with magnetic properties and then applying a strong magnetic field
With MAGhair, we overcome some of our previous limitations regarding the form factor.
Let me introduce you to a video.
[Music playing]
The Design of Maghair is inspired by Magnetic locomotion techniques
We developed a custom electronics which consist of a six layers PCB
Multiple small coils were embedded between layers two and five
These coils generated a small attractive force that acted as a seed for the permanent magnet.
By applying this technique, we were able to precisely control a strong magnetic field in a 2D environment
More details can be found in the paper.
Furthermore, we developed a holding mechanism by combining Iron powder silicone
This one had .1 mm thickness, and it was placed above the electronics.
With this mechanism, we generated an attraction force capable of holding the permanent magnet without the need of using energy
We then evaluated the system with 10 participants
The described sensations were similar than our previous work, low discriminative, gentle and pleasant sensation
We also introduce two new recipes made out of iron-oxide
As well as a system to characterize their response to the magnetic field
The new recipes needed half of the magnetic field previous recipes needed in order to stimulate the body's hair.
Finally, we present an early exploration of how this technology could be adapted into different form factors
Please refer to the paper for more details. Thank you.