An investigation on the impact of auditory and haptic feedback on rhythmic walking interactions.

This paper presents a system capable of rhythmic walking interaction by auditory and haptic display. Likewise, it summarizes the results of the research on the influence of the audio and haptic stimulation on rhythmic walking interaction. The system detects user’s footsteps and either provides interactive real-time feedback or suggests a pace using a synthetic walking sound or vibration. This pace is either a constant tempo or adapts to the walker. Auditory and haptic feedback signals are either ecological physically-based synthetic walking signals or simple sinusoidal beeps. In the experiment, the different auditory and haptic feedback and interaction modes are studied with respect to their effect on the walking tempo. The results show that participants synchronise equally well with the tempo with either audio or haptic cues, but indicate the audio–haptic conditions as the easiest to synchronise with. Moreover, results indicate that multimodal audio–haptic feedback provide the most natural feeling. These results have implications on the design of interactive entertainment or therapeutical applications.