HaRing: A Haptic Ring Interface for One-Handed Interaction with High-Dimensional Spatial Information

Ring interfaces have gained attention in wearable technology for their lightweight and hands-free design. However, their compact form factor limits them to conveying simple information, such as direction or notification, through vibration, electrotactile, or force feedback. In this paper, we introduce HaRing, a novel haptic ring interface equipped with a 4 × 6 pin array display. This dynamic display delivers rich spatial patterns that simple vibration cannot express, effectively conveying high-dimensional information such as directions, semantic symbols, and letters. Its design enables one-handed, eyes-free interaction that does not interfere with visual tasks. We conducted a series of perceptual and user studies to demonstrate its effectiveness, showing a high recognition accuracy of over 94% for complex letters after a brief training period. We anticipate that HaRing can serve as an innovative haptic-only interface for multitasking in real-world or VR environments with high visual load.