M. Ehelagasthenna, A. M. Shahidi, P. Lugoda, W. Hurley, C. Oliveira, K. Marasinghe, M. Flanagan, T. Dias, T. Hughes-Riley

Integrated haptics into the textiles could achieve functional garments for communication, immersive gaming/entertainment, therapy, interaction, and education. This haptic glove focuses on assisting people with vision and hearing impairments to ease their day-to-day activities. Combinations of four haptic stimuli points mimic various haptic signals using the vibration’s different amplitudes, frequencies, and temporals. This could potentially assist them in understanding real-time conversations (converting audio signals to haptic characters), individual navigation (navigational guided signals), and alerts (alarms, announcements, hazardous situations).

Malindu Ehelagasthenna is currently conducting his doctoral research into integrating haptics into textiles as a member of the Advanced Textiles Research Group at Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom. He holds a B.Sc. Eng. (Hons’) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.