Haptics are buzzing at PUI Audio as we are heading into 2023 thinking of audio as a full sensory experience.
Last year, PUI introduced a new line of products, focused on the tactile experience. The new haptics products provide feedback you can feel using the same electromagnetic principles as a speaker – but instead of a paper cone moving air, a moving mass is used to deliver vibrations.
Our haptics products are working to make the world a safer, healthier and more accessible place.
How?
In medical and industrial settings, the ability to feel an important alert is sometimes just as important as hearing one. And when we think of our hearing impaired end users, the ability to feel an alert is even more important.
Haptics help in a crowded medical alert environment.
When multiple notifications—or alerts–are alarming at once, it can be difficult to hear or discern when an alarm is ringing, and then to hear quickly which alarm is ringing. The added practical applications of haptics in a medical setting ensure that alerts are felt and information is deciphered quickly.
Additionally, when commands are input, the addition of haptics, and tactile feedback, make it easy to confirm when the right buttons have been pressed or data input into a system. The additional feel of confirmations (or rejections) through haptics, provide an added layer of support to health care workers who are having to untangle many messages at once.
Utilizing multiple senses helps messages be delivered.
The human body’s five senses are the pathways through which we experience the world around us. It is exceedingly rare that any of these senses are experienced in isolation; often, two or more of our senses receive information simultaneously. Traditionally, many products use two of the five senses to deliver information to a user–sight and hearing. The same strategy applies to haptics, which add a tactile notification in addition to audible or visual cues.
Think about settings in which you push a button and see a light light up, or a beep to confirm. These alerts are enhanced with you also feel the confirmation, with a vibration, indicating to your brain the the process was successful.
Safety messages are heard–and felt–quickly and directly.
In an industrial environment, operators rely on this tactile feedback to prevent accidents, ensure safety and confirm successful processes.
Think of a forklift operator, who is using their visual sense to pay keen attention to the task in front of (and behind them). The operator relies on memory, or tactile feedback, to ensure things they cannot look at are successfully changed or implemented, like buttons being pressed.
The same can be true of those working on a production line, or operating heavy machinery. Often, visual senses must be activated to look in or at a certain focal point, leaving the operations exposed to trusting that other supplementary processes are functioning, confirmed, or—in the case of a safety issue, that the operator is alerted in a way that doesn’t detract from other key functions, where eyes and ears are needed.
Haptics have many applications. Medical and industrial settings are just a couple of examples of how implementation of tactile feedback can help keep critical operations safe. The addition of tactile feedback provides more than accessibility, vibrations ensure messages are relayed in multi-sensory ways that keep operations efficient, medical settings moving and industrial settings safe.
Learn more about what PUI is doing with haptics in our resource center.