Modeling Awareness of Surface Geometry in Auditory Cognitive Channels*

We refer to channels of communication which link the user to various electronic appliances and computers as cognitive communication channels. One especially interesting research topic related to cognitive communication channels deals with a special application called sensory substitution, when information is conveyed through a channel other than the one that is normally used. Besides offering a glimpse of hope to those living with injured sensory organs, sensory substitution can have benefits when designing user interfaces in terms of cost-effectiveness, the reduction of network delays, as well as the prevention of channel overloading. One such application in robot control could be the substitution of haptic feedback gloves (which are costly, bulky and have relatively few vibration states) using parameter-rich audio interfaces. In this paper, we experiment with a model capable of representing geometrical properties of surfaces in terms of audio-substituted tactile percepts, while at the same time modeling the more subjective dimension of user awareness.