Vibrating GPS Navigation In Development

GPS technology has come a long way in the last five years or so. GPS navigation systems in our vehicles help us get turn by turn directions. GPS tracking devices have helped solve crimes and return stolen valuables. One of the limitations of this technology, however, is that directions are provided audibly and via video display. Obviously this causes problems for the hearing and vision impaired population, but also has been criticized as a dangerous distraction for drivers. 

Researchers are in the process of designing and testing tactile GPS displays, which can be worn. The GPS navigation provides directions through vibrations in tiny, disc-like motors used in cell phones. The skin is capable of sensing directions, and researchers are working on designing the most intuitive vibrating directions as possible.

“If you compare the skin to the retina, you have about the same number of sensory receptors, you just have them over almost two square meters of space, unlike the eye, where it’s all concentrated in an extremely small area,” Lynette Jones explains, designer of the wearable tactile displays and a senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The skin is generally as useful in a very acute area. It’s just that you need to disperse the information that you’re presenting.”

Currently, the tactile GPS navigation devices can be worn on the back or around the wrist. Vibrations moving from left to right might indicate a right turn is needed, while a single vibration with increasing intensity might be telling the wearer to slow down. “There’s a lot of things you can do with these displays that are fairly intuitive in terms of how people respond,” says Jones, “which is important because no one’s going to spend hours and hours in any application, learning what a signal means.”

Not only can these devices be used by the vision and hearing impaired, it can also be used by firefighters navigating a smokey, dark building. These devices may also be appealing during activities when checking your GPS display screen is inconvenient, like driving or running.

Vibrating GPS Navigation In Development