FIG. 11H illustrates exemplary sequence of haptic outputs for an example input word 1106, according to an embodiment. In the illustrated example, the input word 1106 is “patent.” This word has 6 different phonemes: 1)/p/, 2)/ā/, 3)/t/, 4)/![custom character]()
/, 5)/n/, and 6)/t/. Note that the second and fourth phonemes are vowels. The word-haptic signal converter 1107 converts each of these phonemes into a sequence of actuator signals 1111, which are transmitted to the cutaneous actuators 1104, which generate a haptic output, such as a vibrational output, based on the actuator signals 1111 and which are sensed by the user. For ease of discussion, each of the sequence of haptic outputs associated with a phoneme is referred to as a haptic phoneme. Thus, the six phonemes of the word “patent” are translated into six haptic phonemes which are sensed by the user. After training, the user may be able to identify the word “patent” after sensing these six haptic phonemes. A similar process would occur for other words.
