This invention describes a wearable device (100) which relies on an array of tactile interfaces (108) (such as vibration motors), and a methodological framework for sending high-bandwidth information through the skin in such a way that relevant information is able to work with the skins sensory limitations. One example application provides speech perception to deaf individuals. The general term for mapping information from one sense to another is sensory substitution. Here, we describe a device and methodological framework for sound-to-touch sensory substitution device that can enable speech perception. This includes a guiding framework to capture relevant information while obeying physiological constraints of the skin. We also describe how the uses of the device can be generalized to other applications-for example, using vibrational patterns on the skin to encode real-time data streams from the Internet, such as stock market data, or weather data.
