{"id":24822,"date":"2018-07-02T14:12:28","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T18:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/?p=24822"},"modified":"2022-03-16T10:46:59","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T14:46:59","slug":"send-and-receive-messages-through-the-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/send-and-receive-messages-through-the-skin\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineers Find Way to Send and Receive Messages Through The Skin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead of receiving information via smartphone, messages could one day be sent and read through a person\u2019s skin, according to new <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/releases\/2018\/Q2\/purdue-phoneme-project-creates-new-haptic-communications-future.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">research<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Engineers at Purdue University, working with MIT and Facebook researchers, have developed a technique that can teach people to interpret nonverbal messages through an arm sleeve that sends haptic signals, such as a buzzing sensation, to the skin. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The study found that by using phonemes, or the 39 distinct units of sound within the English language, test participants were able to interpret the buzzing signals efficiently. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI\u2019m excited about this \u2026 imagine a future where you\u2019re able to wear a sleeve that discreetly sends messages to you \u2013 through your skin \u2013 in times when it may be inconvenient to look at a text message,\u201d <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.purdue.edu\/~hongtan\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hong Tan<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and lead researcher, said in a statement. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tan is also the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">founder and director of Purdue\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.purdue.edu\/hirl\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Haptic Interface Research Laboratory<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What\u2019s haptic communications?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Haptic communication refers to the way people interact via the sense of touch. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While previous research has shown that speech communication through the skin is achievable, training people to interpret messages in English through nonverbal signals has historically been difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But now, the researchers have found success with a system that translates English phonemes to haptic simulation patterns on the skin. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Vowel Animations\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CYfqcdnvMyE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2><b>The study<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To conduct the study, the researchers selected 100 common English words, such as \u201cace,\u201d \u201ckey,\u201d \u201cshoe,\u201d \u201cknee,\u201d and \u201call,\u201d and transcribed them each into the 39 English phonemes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, the phoneme transcription for \u201cace\u201d would be \u201cAY\u201d and \u201cS.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then, the researchers gathered two groups of 12 subjects &#8212; one group that was focused strictly on phoneme-based learning, and another that was focused on word-based learning. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The phoneme-based learning group learned haptic symbols for 10 minutes a day, 10 days straight, using only phonemes before learning the 100 specific words presented as sequences of phonemes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oppositely, the word-based learning group learned the haptic symbols by learning the full words from day one. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each participant used a material cuff that encircled the forearm from the wrist to below the elbow. The instrument featured 24 factors that, when stimulated, emitted vibrations against the skin that changed quality and position based on the phonemes it was signaling. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, the sounds of consonants K, P and T were stationary sensations on different areas of the arm, while vowels were indicated by simulations that moved up, down or around the forearm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Speech Through Skin:  Haptic Communications Research\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JU-GNH5vrmQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2><b>The results <\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The researchers found that the phoneme-based learning method was more successful and provided a more consistent path for users to learn in a short period of time. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWith the phoneme approach, one learns 39 symbols corresponding to the 39 phonemes of English, and can then receive any English word made up of a string of phonemes,\u201d said Tan. \u201cWith the word-based approach, the smart participants figured out early on that each word is made up of symbols representing the sounds, and they learnt just as well as the participants with the phoneme approach.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She explained that the word-based approach took most people longer to understand, which slowed down the learning process altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBy then, they were a bit behind, their ability to recognize the phonemes was not solid, and their word recognition performance plateaued because they kept confusing the symbols representing the phonemes,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the phoneme approach, the researchers found that at least half of the subjects could perform at 80 percent accuracy, with two of the 12 subjects reaching 90 percent accuracy. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Applications <\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The researchers predict that communications via the skin will benefit everyone &#8212; from the hearing-impaired and visually-impaired to people on the go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cUltimately, anyone with or without sensory deficits can wear such a sleeve to receive information on the go, especially when reading a message is not safe or convenient due to activities like driving or running,\u201d said Tan. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The yearlong research was funded by Facebook as a means to develop new communication platforms. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe are collaborating with Facebook through the company\u2019s Sponsored Academic Research Agreement. Facebook is interested in developing new platforms for communication and the haptic research we are doing has been promising,\u201d Tan said in a statement. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tan said the next steps in the research include connecting the sleeve to an automatic speech recognizer, developing a more lightweight and wearable sleeve, and continuing to train people to learn longer strings of words. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Instead of receiving information via smartphone, messages could one day be sent and read through a person\u2019s skin, according to new research. Engineers at Purdue University, working with MIT and Facebook researchers, have developed a technique that can teach people to interpret nonverbal messages through an arm sleeve that sends haptic signals, such as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":24835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[626,232,424,425,426,230,229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-technology","category-purdue-university-calumet-campus","category-purdue-university-main-campus","category-purdue-university-north-central-campus","category-news","category-lead-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haptic-deviceLO.jpg",830,533,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haptic-deviceLO-224x144.jpg",224,144,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haptic-deviceLO-300x193.jpg",300,193,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haptic-deviceLO.jpg",830,533,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haptic-deviceLO.jpg",830,533,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haptic-deviceLO.jpg",830,533,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haptic-deviceLO.jpg",830,533,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Natalie Colarossi","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/author\/natalie-colarossi\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Instead of receiving information via smartphone, messages could one day be sent and read through a person\u2019s skin, according to new research. Engineers at Purdue University, working with MIT and Facebook researchers, have developed a technique that can teach people to interpret nonverbal messages through an arm sleeve that sends haptic signals, such as a&hellip;","featured_media_src_url":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haptic-deviceLO.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}