Towards Enhancing Spatial Awareness through Electrical Muscle Stimulation

ABSTRACT With advances of new technologies there is a growing interest in augmenting human senses with sensory information. This paper aims at using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to support sensing the proximity of objects. We propose a concept relating distance to properties of electrical muscle stimulation. Our study provides first evidence that our approach can be used to convey information on the proximity of objects to users of the EMS system. We report on the correlations between a simulated proximity and the proximity felt based on EMS. Based on this we propose fields of applications which can benefit from such a system. Our approach can be used where people need to be notified with regard to spatial information, e.g., dangerous objects approaching from behind.