Dolphin

DOLPHIN is an open-source software framework which aims to assist with designing ultrasound mid-air tactile stimuli, primarily for use in perceptual studies. The tool was developed at Inria Rennes/IRISA in the scope of the H-Reality European project. DOLPHIN encompasses two software components, a stimulus designer and a stimulus player which are designed to easily interface with 3rd party software, in particular software for running perception experiments such as PsychoPy.

DOLPHIN ‘s core aim is to provide easily accessible and standardized workflows for designing ultrasound mid-air haptic stimuli, while providing full control over all physical aspects of the stimuli and posing minimal restrictions to their configuration. Thanks to a dual file format system, stimuli designed in DOLPHIN’s designer tool can be exported for later reuse, within or outside of DOLPHIN. Standardizing workflows for stimulus design can help novice designers or researchers in efficiently designing stimuli without overlooking any critical design aspects. This in turn ensures maximum control over the perceived qualities of said stimuli. This can hopefully contribute to more efficient perception study design, better communication between researchers and designers, and higher reproducibility of studies on the topic of ultrasound mid-air haptics.

DOLPHIN’s player component is designed to interface with 3rd party software (e.g. PsychoPy) to enable controlled playback of stimuli designed in the stimulus designer or in other stimulus design tools that may use a compatible stimulus file format.

Currently, DOLPHIN is designed for use with Ultraleap haptics hardware and supports a single workflow for stimuli rendered in 2D planes parallel to the array. Work is ongoing to provide modular workflows and 3D stimulus design, among other things.

If you have any questions about the project or if you would like to get involved, you can find the current project version and contributor contact information over on Gitlab – of feel free to use the contact form to get in touch with me!