Project Overview:

While smartphone map navigation provides a convenient outdoor travel experience, its visual, audio, and vibration feedback mechanisms may fail to meet the accessibility needs of particular users or account for temporary obstacles. Various devices have been developed to overcome these limitations, but they are often accompanied by high prices or technological barriers, potentially hindering widespread adoption and research replication. To address this, we aim to design a low-cost, open-source device providing additional sensory feedback to support accessible navigation. Therefore, we introduce Tangible Compass, a handheld haptic device as an add-on for smartphone navigation functions, providing force guidance in various accessible navigation scenarios. Its functionality is achieved through smartphone sensor data streaming, scenario-based algorithmic force rendering, and a compact one Degree of Freedom (1-DoF) kinesthetic device transmitting forces. We detail the processes and results of structural designs, system setups, and force rendering algorithms for any replication and design alternation. To demonstrate real-world applications, we present three interaction scenarios with manipulating Tangible Compass: route orientation navigation, notification procedures, and forward clearance detection.