Design and application of vibration emoticons in wearable computing devices

The possibility of using vibration to express emotions in wearable computing devices was investigated for the tactile stimulation by vibration. Based on the analysis of content like tactile stimulation, tactile expression and vibrayion parameters, six vibration models were designed by configuring the intensity, rhythm and duration of vibration. The six models, which were called vibration emoticons, were corresponding to six basic emotions, including anger, fear, funny, sadness, disgust and surprise. The vibration emoticons were used on four body parts, where wearable computing devices were often applied, including finger, wrist, upper arm and ankle. Then the recognition rates of the vibration emoticons were compared. Comparison of users' recognition accuracies was used to see if they could link emotions that they were given from each body part to emotions from each vibration model. A wearable vibration ring was designed to evaluate the emoticons' effectiveness by exploring the role of vibration emoctions on emotion expression in long distance communication scenario. Results show that the wearable computing devices with vibration emoticons can improve the recognition accuracy of emotions and enhance the perceptual intensity of emotions by expressing emotion through vibration stimulation. Therefore, the vibration emotions can be applied to wearable computing devices to express emotional features in the form of vibration, so as to improve the efficiency of emotion transfer. © 2015, Zhejiang University. All right reserved.