We propose a new type of tactile displays that drag a physical tactor across the skin in 2D. We call this skin drag. We demonstrate how this allows us to communicate geo-metric shapes or characters to users. The main benefit of our approach is that it simultaneously produces two types of stimuli, i.e., (1) it moves a tactile stimulus across skin locations and (2) it stretches the user’s skin. Skin drag thereby combines the essential stimuli produced by vi-brotactile and skin stretch. In our study, skin drag allowed participants to recognize tactile shapes significantly better than a vibrotactile array of comparable size. We present two arm-worn prototype devices that implement our con-cept.
