01 — Research
Can touch carry what sight usually does?
That is the question my PhD keeps returning to. People with vision impairment build a picture of a room from sound, memory and the tip of a cane. I want to add a channel: wearable haptic interfaces that render the shape of nearby space on the skin, clearly enough to act on and quietly enough to wear all day. Getting there runs through skin mechanics, wearable hardware and a great many user studies.
- Lab
- aid-lab
- Supervisor
- Associate Professor Anusha Withana
- Started
- July 2024
- Expected
- July 2028
02 — The thesis
Sensory augmentation for vision impairment through haptics
What I'm trying to do
- 01 Design haptic metaphors that communicate spatial information intuitively.
- 02 Build wearable sensory-augmentation systems that survive real-world navigation.
- 03 Measure how people adapt to sensory substitution over time, not just in a first session.
- 04 Turn the findings into design guidelines for accessible multisensory interfaces.
How
- User-centred design with the vision-impairment community.
- Qualitative interviews and field studies.
- Iterative prototyping of wearable haptic hardware.
- Quantitative evaluation of spatial awareness and navigation performance.
03 — Project
TactDeform
Finger-pad deformation as a design language for spatial tactile feedback.
When you run a finger over a cube, your skin does different things at a face, an edge and a corner. Vibration motors flatten all of that into a buzz. TactDeform parametrically emulates the deformation of the finger pad on a high-density electro-tactile array, so virtual geometry can be explored by touch: faces spread, edges draw a line that widens, corners stay sharp, and textures slide past in 2 mm steps.
Try it. Pick a feature, then press in or slide along.
Yihao Dong, Praneeth Bimsara Perera, Chin-Teng Lin, Craig T Jin, Anusha Withana
In contact with an edge: a band that widens along the ridge as the finger presses in.
04 — Project
Just Before Touch
Proactive haptics: a cue that arrives before the contact does.
Haptic feedback in VR is almost always reactive: you touch, then you feel. We asked what happens if the vibration arrives a little early. A short vibrotactile cue about 100 ms before visual contact, with the right amplitude envelope, changes the perceived material of the contact. It is a cheap, actuator-free way to widen the range of sensations a controller can give.
Set the lead time and the envelope, then play. On phones that support it, the cue really vibrates.
Yihao Dong, Pamuditha Somarathne, Craig T Jin, Juno Kim, Andrea Bianchi, Anusha Withana
Press play. The haptic cue fires 100 ms before the hand visibly reaches the target. Illustrative. Measured effects are in the paper.
05 — With collaborators
Extra limbs and shared bodies
A second strand of work in the lab, led by Hongyu Zhou, asks how people control and share supernumerary robotic limbs in VR. I contribute to study design and analysis.
CHI ’26
SRL Proxemics: Spatial Guidelines for Supernumerary Robotic Limbs in Near-Body Interactions
Where should an extra robotic limb operate around the body? Spatial guidelines for supernumerary robotic limbs in near-body interaction.
CHI ’25 Honorable Mention · Top 5%
Juggling Extra Limbs: Identifying Control Strategies for Supernumerary Multi-Arms in Virtual Reality
How do people control several extra virtual arms at once? Identifying the control strategies that work for supernumerary multi-arms in VR.
arXiv
A Survey on Methodological Approaches to Collaborative Embodiment in Virtual Reality
A survey of how researchers study collaborative embodiment in virtual reality, and where the methods still disagree.
06 — Interests
Research interests
Sensory augmentationHaptic feedbackVision impairment and accessibilityAssistive technologyMultisensory perceptionWearable computingExtended reality