Impact of Auditory Distractions on Haptic Messages Presented Under

the Foot

Landry D. Chapwouo T. and Bob-Antoine J. Menelas

University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC), Department of Computer Science,

555 boulevard de l’Universit

e Chicoutimi (Quebec) G7H 2B1, Canada

Keywords:

Haptic Messages, Auditory Distractions, Tactons, Foot Perception.

Abstract:

When compared to vision and audition, communication capabilities of the haptic channel remain underex-

ploited. In this paper, we investigate the impact of auditory distractions on the learning of haptic messages

presented under the foot plantar. From a set of six haptic messages that have been designed in order to be eas-

ily differentiable one from another, participants have to select four. With and without the presence of auditory

distractions, we evaluate the completion time and the number of iteration required to reach an identiﬁcation

rate greater than 95%. For both measures, we observed that having auditory distractions was detrimental to

the performances of users.

1 INTRODUCTION

In human-machine interaction, to take advantage of

full capabilities of human sensory-motor capacities

main modalities (vision, haptics, and audition) are

generally exploited. That deﬁnes a multimodal inter-

action. Like many researchers, we think that a modal-

ity is directly related to human senses (Fikkert et al.,

2007). We deﬁne the modality as the form of ex-

change that can be established between a user and

a digital system (Menelas, 2014). In contrast to the

unimodal condition where only one form of commu-

nication is possible, in a multimodal rendering sev-

eral forms of communication are available. When

compared to the unimodal condition, the design of

a multimodal rendering one has to take into account

interactions that may exist between different chan-

nels. For Friedes, multimodality appears as an ag-

gregate of several unimodal renderings, where each

one has its own characteristics (Freides, 1974). Each

channel must thus be assigned to the rendering of a

particular type of information (Nesbitt et al., 2003).

Bowman et al. (Bowman et al., 2004) adopt a more

general view by deﬁning multimodality as the com-

bination of several modalities that aims to provide a

richer interaction. They recognize six types of mul-

timodal associations: complementarity, redundancy,

equivalence, specialization, competition, and trans-

fer. Recently, beyond the interactions between the

different modalities, Menelas showed that the task to

perform played a preponderant role in a multimodal

interaction (Menelas, 2014). He proposed a taxon-

omy based on the tasks that the user wants to achieve.

All these studies focused on situations achieved in a

controlled-environment (immersive room, work sta-

tion etc.). Therefore, one question arises: what hap-

pens if one has to exploit a multimodal rendering in

an uncontrolled environment like on the street or in

public transport? In other terms, would the asso-

ciation of some rendering be detrimental to perfor-

mances of users? We are interested in this situation,

as our project concerns the use of the haptic feedback

to communicate information to a user using an enac-

tive shoe.

This enactive shoe has been designed in order to

prevent accidental falls (Fig. 1) (Otis and Menelas,

2012; Otis et al., 2016; Ayena et al., 2016). This de-

vice has a set of sensors used to characterize the dy-

namics of walking, the gait and physical properties of

the environment (Otis et al., 2016; Ayena et al., 2016).

Besides, it regroups several actuators (notably a hap-

tuator (Yao and Hayward, 2010)) aiming to transmit

haptic signals to the user (see Fig 1). These signals

will be used to alert the user to dangerous situations

or to correct anomalies of his gait. In this sense, these

signals appear as an aid aiming to assist the user (Otis

and Menelas, 2012; Otis et al., 2016; Menelas and

Otis, 2012). We are interested in transmitting these

messages by the mean of haptic messages because

this channel may allow to communicate with the per-

son without preventing him from being fully aware

T., L. and Menelas, B-A.

Impact of Auditory Distractions on Haptic Messages Presented Under the Foot.

DOI: 10.5220/0006713600550063

In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2018) - Volume 2: HUCAPP, pages

55-63

ISBN: 978-989-758-288-2

Figure 1: Enactive shoe system overview: (a) Audio ampliﬁer to manage output signal. (b) enactive shoe: A rear strap

enabling the shoe to be ﬁrmly strapped on the foot. (c) Haptuators mounted in the left foot. (d) Earphones to render auditory

distractors.

of his external environment; as it could have been

with visual or audible communications. Knowing that

users will wear the shoe during walking (uncontrolled

environment), the objective is to be able to transmit

haptic messages that remain interpretable in spite of

the distractions of the environment. While walking in

a street, such distractions may be the walk in itself,

visual or auditory stimuli. As a preliminary work,

we investigate here how auditory distractions may im-

pact the learning of haptic messages presented to the

foot plantar via an enactive shoe. We have selected to

study the impact of auditory distractions for two main

reasons. Recently, Meier et al. (Meier et al., 2015)

evaluated the suitability of vibrotactile feedbacks, in

different areas of the body including sole of the foot

and toe, as a mean of guidance. Their study suggests

that, ﬁrstly, the foot provides the most promising re-

sults for the identiﬁcation of vibration patterns while

walking. Secondly, the use of vibrotactile feedbacks

on the foot (side/sole/top) allows to reduce the stress

and the need for visual attention. Other research has

investigated the rendering of tactile stimuli via instru-

mented shoe.

The main contribution of this paper is to study the

impact of auditory distraction on the identiﬁcation of

a tacton presented under the foot plantar.

2 RELATED WORK

The study of haptics as an information mediation

channel has focused on the hand (Brewster and

Brown, 2004; MacLean and Enriquez, 2003). In this

study, we are interested in evaluating the perception

capabilities of the foot in the presence of distractive

sounds. Following sections brieﬂy, review the identi-

ﬁcation of haptic messages presented under the foot

plantar and the impact of auditory distractions on the

perception of haptic messages.

2.1 Identiﬁcation of Haptic Messages

Presented Under the Foot

When compared to other areas of the body, the use of

foot for haptic perception remains limited. One of the

ﬁrst works on this topic studied the usability of an in-

strumented tile to mimic physical properties of soils

such as ice, crack and sand (Visell et al., 2009). Later,

Turchet et al. (Turchet et al., 2013) observed that hap-

tic feedbacks presented to the feet may enhance the

realism of walking or simulate it. In the same way,

Nordahl et al. (Nordahl et al., 2010) have studied the

combination of haptic and sound feedbacks in order

to simulate the sensation of walking on virtual sur-

faces. The haptic information was presented at the

foot of the user through an instrumented shoe. The

studies carried out indicated that subjects were capa-

ble to recognize most of the stimuli in the audition

only condition, and some of the material properties

such as hardness in the haptics only condition. Re-

cently, Meier et al. (Meier et al., 2015) evaluated the

suitability of vibrotactile feedbacks, in different areas

of the body including sole of the foot and toe, as a

means of guidance. Their study suggests that the foot

provides the most promising results for the identiﬁca-

tion of vibration patterns while walking. Also, it indi-

cates that the use of vibrotactile feedbacks on the foot

(side/sole/top) allows to reduce the stress and the need

for visual attention. Other studies have investigated

the rendering of tactile stimuli via instrumented shoe.

For instance, by using an array of sixteen dots of ac-

tuators, Velazquez et al. (Vel

azquez et al., 2009) have

HUCAPP 2018 - International Conference on Human Computer Interaction Theory and Applications

shown that some geometric shapes could be discrimi-

nated in order to guide a blind person while walking.

2.2 Impact of Auditory Distractions on

the Perception of Haptic Messages

There has been little work into how auditory dis-

tractions inﬂuence the haptic perception of a person

on various work tasks. Chan et al. noted that the

learning and identiﬁcation capabilities of vibrotac-

tile messages decreased signiﬁcantly with the addi-

tion of visual and audible disturbing elements (Chan

et al., 2005). Later, Tikka and Laitinien noticed that

when interacting with mobile devices, auditory stim-

uli do biased the perceived intensity of haptic feed-

backs (Tikka and Laitinen, 2006). In the same way,

Qian et al. speciﬁed that the type of background

sounds had a signiﬁcant effect on identiﬁcation ac-

curacy, identiﬁcation time, and probably on the cog-

nitive workload as well (Qian et al., 2013). These re-

sults conﬁrmed those presented in (Oakley and Park,

2008) where Oakley and Park showed that walking

could signiﬁcantly affect the ability to identify haptic

messages. However, this work did not analyzed the

level of external distraction that was tolerated nor the

inﬂuence of age or training on the ability to identify

haptic messages.

To the best of our knowledge, no research has yet

investigated the impact of audible distractions on the

perception of haptic messages presented via the foot.

This work addresses this aspect. The next section de-

scribes the performed experiment. We ended with re-

sults and discussion. The evaluation with participants

was approved by the local Ethical Committee of the

University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (certiﬁcate num-

ber 602-462-01).

3 EXPLOITED SIGNALS AND

APPARATUS

Two types of signals are exploited in this study: Hap-

tic messages and auditory distractions. The haptic

channel is used as a communication medium whereas

audio signals are exploited as distractors.

3.1 Selected Tactons

Given that the cutaneous sense, a rich and a power-

ful communication medium, remains underexploited

when interacting with computers (Menelas et al.,

2014), we want to exploit haptic messages to com-

municate with the user throughout the foot. For this,

we are interested in using mechanoreceptors situated

under the foot plantar. They are responsible for sens-

ing and transmitting physical deformations, caused

by external forces, to the nervous system (Vel

azquez

et al., 2009). To ensure the ability to transmit tactile

information to the user, the haptic messages used in

this study are tactons. Brewster and Brown (Brewster

and Brown, 2004) deﬁned tactons, or tactile icons, as

structured, abstract messages that can be used to com-

municate messages non-visually. Here we use a set a

six tactons represented in Table 1. They are coming

from a previous study (Menelas and Otis, 2012) and

they are designed to be easily differentiable. They

will be used to convey the information of a two-bit

alphabet.

From this set of six tactons (T

, T

and T

), participants have to choose four preferred

considered to be the most different. We allow par-

ticipants to express their preferences among a set of

six tactons, based on the work reported in (Garzo-

nis et al., 2009). These authors have observed that

there is a strong positive correlation between prefer-

ence and successful identiﬁcation of auditory notiﬁ-

cations. The six proposed tactons are shown in Table

Table 1: Proposed Tactons.

Name Equation

sin(180πt)

sin(6πt)sin(122πt)

sin(12πt)sin(122πt)

sin(62πt)square(50%;71)

(-t

+0:5) sin(120πt)

sin(120πt)

t = [0 : 1/9600 : 1] sec.

3.2 Selected Auditory Distractions

We used two auditory distractions (see Fig. 2). They

are external noise commonly heard in everyday life.

The ﬁrst metaphor mimics the sound of a car horn

and the second is an approaching ambulance siren.

The duration of each stimulus is two seconds, with

an intensity of 60 dB SPL. To avoid abrupt noise on-

sets, noise distractions intensity increased gradually.

The auditory distractions are presented continuously

during the test in the associated condition.

3.3 Apparatus

To render the tactons, we use an enactive shoe with

two Haptuators as shown in Fig. 1. Haptuators are vi-

brating devices directly in contact with the foot plan-

Impact of Auditory Distractions on Haptic Messages Presented Under the Foot

Figure 2: Auditory distractions send on participant’s ear during the test. (a) Audio wave frequency of a car horn. (b) Audio

wave frequency of approaching ambulance siren. Wave frequencies have been obtained using rWavePad Sound Editor

software.

tar of the participant. The Haptuator is discreet and

ﬁts well in the designed enactive shoe. The sound

card of an Android smartphone is exploited to trans-

mit the Tactons. These signals are then ampliﬁed (by

an audio ampliﬁer showed in Fig. 1 - a) and sent to

both Haptuators in (Fig. 1 - c) embedded into a shoe

(Fig. 1 - b).

We use a Sony Noise Canceling Headphone,

Black - MDRZX110NC (Fig. 1 - d) in order to render

a distracting auditory and canceling external noise to

participants.

3.4 Positioning the Haptuator Under

the Foot

We perceive and distinguish various tactile feeling on

the skin by touching. We know that people can eas-

ily discriminate a very ﬁne signal of a surface thanks

to the tactile feeling. For instance, it is reported that

our ﬁnger can distinguish a micron order difference

of surface roughness of sandpapers (Asamura et al.,

1998). This differentiation is possible thanks to the

mechanoreceptors located under the skin. Indeed,

Pasquero reported that mechanoreceptors are charac-

terized by the size of their receptive ﬁeld and their

adaptation rate to a stimulus (Pasquero, 2006). Types

I allows to discriminate small and well-deﬁned bor-

ders while types II intervene for large and poorly-

deﬁned borders. Also, Velazquez and Pissaloux re-

ported that mechanoreceptors of the foot plantar are

usually classiﬁed based on their rate of adaptivity and

receptive ﬁeld (Vel

azquez and Pissaloux, 2008). Gen-

erally, there are four types of mechanoreceptors in

the foot plantar: slow adapting type I (SAI), slow

adapting type II (SAII), fast adapting type I (FAI) and

fast adapting type II (FAII) (Vel

azquez and Pissaloux,

2008). Only two afferents, one FAI and one FAII,

have the receptor terminal on the hairy skin of the calf

(Kennedy and Inglis, 2002). Then, it seems that stim-

ulation of FAI mechanoreceptors is more suitable for

transmitting information to the foot (Vel

azquez and

Pissaloux, 2008). However, Kaya has identiﬁed some

interesting features: The FAIs are the Meissner cor-

puscles that best respond to light touch, and the FAIIs

are the Pacinian corpuscles which are best for vibra-

tions (Kaya, 2014). The position of the haptuators has

been selected in order to be in contact with FAI and

FAII. Hence, a better perception of the signal is ex-

pected. In order to convey the same vibration with a

quick perception, the transmitted signal will be iden-

tical on both haptuators and will be located on FAIs

and FAIIs.

4 EXPERIMENT

The experiment aims at measuring the impact of audi-

tory distractions on the learning of tactons presented

to the foot. Participants have to learn to identify four

tactons presented on the foot plantar. To reﬂect a real-

life situation, we assess how everyday sounds do im-

pact performances of their task.

Two experimental conditions are speciﬁed: with

audio distraction (AD) and with no distraction (ND).

Namely, in the ND condition, only the tacton is ren-

dered via the enactive shoe. In the AD condition, dur-

ing the rendering of the tactons under the foot plan-

tar, auditory distractions described previously are also

rendered through the headphone. For both conditions,

we evaluate the performances of participants to iden-

HUCAPP 2018 - International Conference on Human Computer Interaction Theory and Applications

tify four tactons speciﬁcally the completion time and

the number of iterations required to reach an identiﬁ-

cation rate greater than 95%.

4.1 Participants

A total of 38 participants (21 males and 17 females)

aged between 20 and 40, took part in the experiment.

In this set of participants, one counts four postgrad-

uates and ten graduates. The others are undergrad-

uates. Based on our pre-experimental questionnaire,

ﬁve participants had previous experiences with hap-

tic messages. The later reported having used haptic

messages in everyday life with smartphones. More

importantly, all participants reported normal levels of

auditory and tactile perception. Fig. 3 shows a partic-

ipant experimenting the system.

Figure 3: Experiment setup while no distraction condition.

A seated participant performing the test with the device

mounted on the left foot.

Participants are randomly divided into two groups

and G

) of 19. To minimize learning effect, par-

ticipants of G

completed the test in the ND condition

(No Distraction) then in AD condition (with Audio

Distraction). Participants of the second group G

per-

formed the test in the opposite order.

4.2 Experimental Plan

Materials described previously are employed for this

experiment. At the beginning of the test, participants

are invited to sit. The details of the experiment are

presented. They are also encouraged to ask questions

if needed. After all, they are asked to sign the associ-

ated consent form. Subsequently, participants have to

wear the described enactive shoe. At this stage, each

participant is invited to choose four tactons among the

six described at subsection 3.1. To do this, the partic-

ipant uses a software running on an Android device.

It allows to render tactons by touching buttons on the

screen of the mobile device. Afterwords, the evalua-

tion begins.

The evaluation consists of several trials where the

participant seeks to correctly identify the tactons ren-

dered via the enactive shoe. For each participant, the

total number of trials required will be the number of

rounds that this participant needs to achieve an iden-

tiﬁcation score greater than 95 %. For each trial, the

participant is asked to randomly identify each tacton

three times. Hence, a total of twelve identiﬁcations

have to be made. For each trial, we record the identi-

ﬁcation score, the number of iterations, and the com-

pletion time taken to complete theses twelve identiﬁ-

cations (Duration). The percentage of correct identi-

ﬁcation is deﬁned by the ratio between the number of

correct identiﬁcation and 12.

5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

5.1 Results

All participants successfully completed the test with

an average time of 30 minutes. Regarding the number

of iterations required to achieve an identiﬁcation rate

greater than 95%, in ND condition the average itera-

tion is 2.47. It rises to 3.32 when auditory distractions

are presented. In the same way, the average duration

to complete all identiﬁcations rise from 38 sec in ND

condition to 82.36 sec in AD condition. Results are

reported at Table 2.

For both factors, we observed that having audi-

tory distractions negatively affects the identiﬁcation

of tactons. In the ND condition, ﬁve participants com-

pleted the test at their ﬁrst iteration. A maximum of

ﬁve iterations have been required by one participant.

Among the participants, we observed that the shortest

duration was 51 sec. whereas the highest was 149 sec.

On the other hand, in the AD condition, three partici-

pants completed the test at their ﬁrst iteration. A max-

imum of twelve iterations has been required by one

participant. For comparison, one notes that in the AD

condition, six participants completed the test in six or

more iterations. No participant required so many it-

erations in the ND condition. In terms of duration,

in the AD condition, among the participants, we ob-

Impact of Auditory Distractions on Haptic Messages Presented Under the Foot

Table 2: Results summarized and presented for both conditions.

ND condition AD condition

Participants Iterations Durations Participants Iterations Durations

5 1 32.394 3 1 101.47

17 2 45.79 20 2 81.63

12 3 30.75 4 3 86.99

4 4 44.43 4 4 78.89

4 5 20.82 1 5 78.35

1 6 75.22

1 7 85.76

1 8 64.16

1 9 58.36

1 12 102.88

served that the shortest duration was 54 sec whereas

the highest was 271 sec.

In general, we see that participants required more

iterations (12 iterations) in condition AD than in the

condition ND (5 iterations). Looking at participants’

performances (iteration and duration), Fig. 4 shows

that the duration of the AD condition is generally the

biggest. This can be conﬁrmed by the fact that partic-

ipants took more iteration to succeed (Fig. 5).

In terms of number of iterations, in the ND con-

dition, (Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 - b), we see that ﬁve par-

ticipants completed the test at their ﬁrst iteration. 17

participants had to go to a second iteration. 12 par-

ticipants completed the experiment after three itera-

tions while four made it after four iterations. Only one

participant succeeded with ﬁve iterations. All corre-

sponding durations are reported in Table 3.

In terms of iteration, in the AD condition (Fig. 4

and Fig. 5 - a), we see that three participants com-

pleted the test at their ﬁrst iteration. 20 participants

had to go to a second iterations. But four participants

had to go to the third and the fourth iteration. Finally,

only one participant succeeded with ﬁve, six, seven,

Figure 4: Summarized results of durations (AD vs ND) and

iterations (AD vs ND).

Figure 5: Performance of participant on both conditions

[Auditory Distraction (AD) vs No auditory Distraction

(ND)] : (a) Number of iterations by participants; (b) Du-

ration by participants.

eight, nine and twelve iterations. All corresponding

durations are reported in Table 3.

5.2 Statistical Analysis

We are looking for the effect of each independent

variable in each condition of the experiment. We have

one assumption: Do distractions have any effect on

the identiﬁcation of tactons?

In this analysis, we want to study the effect of

auditory distractions on the identiﬁcation of the tac-

tons. Identiﬁcation of tactons can be achieved in one

or many iterations with different completion times.

HUCAPP 2018 - International Conference on Human Computer Interaction Theory and Applications

Table 3: Two-sample T-test results for H

and H

hypothesis.

Summarized data

AD* ND*

Iterations Durations Iterations Durations

Sample size 38 38 38 38

Mean 3.32 82.36 2.47 38

SD 2.48 20.76 0.951 19,94

SE Mean 0.4 1.9 0.16 5.7

* AD= Auditory distraction condition; ND= No Auditory distraction condition.

Our independent variables are therefore iteration and

completion time (duration). The results of the T-test

presented here will validate the following hypothesis

tests:

1. H

hypothesis for effect of the auditory distraction

on the number of iterations

(a) H

The null hypothesis: The auditory distrac-

tion has no effect on the iteration.

(b) H

The alternative hypothesis: The auditory

distraction has an effect on iteration.

2. H

hypothesis for effect of auditory distraction on

the completion time

(a) H

The null hypothesis: the auditory distrac-

tions has no effect on the completion time.

(b) H

The alternative hypothesis: The auditory

distraction has an effect on completion time

(duration).

Our approach is as follows. We assumed that for the

null hypotheses (H

and H

), all means are equal

and for the alternative hypothesis (H

, and H

) at

least one mean is different from another. Our signif-

icance alpha level is 0.05. The dependent variable is

”distraction” and our independent variables are ”itera-

tions” and ”durations” to recognize stimuli. To evalu-

ate hypothesis H

and H

two T-test are conducted for

the two conditions (with audio distraction and without

distraction). The sample observation N=38.

5.2.1 T-test of the Number of Iterations on Two

Conditions (ND and AD)

A paired-samples T-test was conducted to compare

the number of iterations to succeed the test in two

conditions (with audio distraction (AD) and no dis-

traction (ND)). Results of this analysis are reported

in Table 3. There was a signiﬁcant difference in the

number of iterations t(37)=2.359, p = 0.023. Indeed,

the mean of the differences between factor is 0.842 lo-

cated into the 95% conﬁdence interval (0.119, 1.565).

The boxplot displaying the mean of iteration’s varia-

tion on both conditions is presented in Fig. 6. These

results suggest that the audio distraction does have

Figure 6: Boxplot of iteration (AD vs ND).

an effect on the number of iterations. Speciﬁcally,

observed results suggest that when humans are ex-

posed to auditory distractors, the number of iterations

to learn stimuli increases. Since the p-value is greater

than our alpha level (α=0.05), then we can say that

we failed to reject the null hypothesis H01 and vali-

date the Ha1.

5.2.2 T-test of the Duration on Two Conditions

(ND and AD)

A paired-samples T-test was conducted to compare

the completion time (duration) to succeed the test in

two conditions (audio distraction (AD) and no dis-

traction (ND)). Results of this analysis are reported

in Table 3. There was a signiﬁcant difference in

the duration t(37)=11.099, p = 2.48 × 10

−13

. In-

deed, the mean of the differences between factor

is 43.866 located into the 95% conﬁdent interval

(35.857, 51.874). The boxplot displaying the full

range where the duration varies is presented in Fig. 7.

These results suggest that the audio distraction does

have an effect on the duration taken by participants

to recognize vibrotactile messages. Since the p-value

is greater than our alpha level (α=0.05), then we can

say that we failed to reject the null hypothesis H02

and validate the Ha2.

Impact of Auditory Distractions on Haptic Messages Presented Under the Foot

Figure 7: Boxplot of duration (AD vs ND).

The validation of this hypothesis thus becomes

a major fact for the transmission of information us-

ing the haptic channel to the foot with auditory dis-

traction. However, in our study, we simulated audi-

tory distraction, but it would be interesting to con-

ﬁrm these results in a non-controlled external envi-

ronment.

5.3 Discussion

In this research, we have evaluated two main hypoth-

esis. The ﬁrst one was referring to the possibility of

auditory distraction to inﬂuence the number of iter-

ation. According to results exposed in the previous

subsection, it is clear that the audio distractions does

have a signiﬁcant effect on the number of iteration.

These results are in line with the study of Qian

et al. suggesting that background sound has a sig-

niﬁcant effect on the identiﬁcation time (Qian et al.,

2011). Considering that the position and the types of

device exploited in these studies are different this sug-

gests that observed results may be extended to other

body parts. Of courses, more studies are required to

validate such observations. Mainly, considering that

haptic interactions are likely to be used in wearable

devices, the impact of external auditory perturbations

has to study in detail.

On the basis of these results, it therefore appears

that to complete this study: two aspects have to be

investigated. They are: the impact of walking and

the inﬂuence of aging on haptics perceptions. These

aspects will be investigated in a future work.

6 CONCLUSION

This paper was aimed at measuring the impact of au-

ditory distractions on the learning of haptic messages

presented to the foot. 38 participants took part in

the experiment while being at sited in a quiet posi-

tion wearing the enactive shoe. They have to learn

to identify four tactons, among a set of six, presented

under the foot plantar. To reﬂect a real-life situation,

we assess how everyday sounds do impact the perfor-

mances of their identiﬁcation task. For this, for two

conditions: with and without auditory distractions, we

evaluated how much iteration and time are required

to reach a recognition rate greater than 95%? Results

showed that both iteration and completion time are

negatively affected by the presence of auditory dis-

tractions.

In a near future, while sending a haptic message

on the foot, one extension of this study, on one hand,

will be to evaluate the impact of external disturbing

factors occurring in everyday life like walking task,

cognitive task (counting and counting down). On an-

other hand, we plan to identify haptic messages while

walking on different types of soil in a noisy environ-

ment with youth versus elderlies participants.

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