20.500.12556/RUL-188609 Head-worn vibrotactile cueing interface for aquatic environments design and field validation Aquatic environments impose strong constraints on conventional feedback channels and challenge the deployment of wearable human–machine interfaces. This paper presents the design, characterization, and field validation of a head-worn vibrotactile interface intended for symbolic cue delivery during swimming. The proposed platform consists of a waterproof wearable node, six individually controlled actuators, a custom driver, and a host-side control application that uses a lightweight protocol and autonomous execution to tolerate intermittent wireless connectivity after submersion. Actuator operation was characterized under deployment conditions. Symbolic cues were encoded using spatial and sequential activation patterns and validated in a field protocol with 51 competitive swimmers. To enable practical scoring without additional underwater motion instrumentation, each cue was mapped to an externally observable response. After familiarization with a six-symbol cue–response vocabulary, participants produced the predefined observable responses with 96.96% overall task-level accuracy, with 99.35% in the initial out-of-water trial and 94.55% in the subsequent in-water trial following symbol familiarizing and training. Because trial order was fixed, the between-trial difference cannot be attributed exclusively to the aquatic medium. Symbol-level analysis showed that front-actuator and crawl cues were the most robust. Secondary user evaluation results indicated that the prototype was understandable and tolerable during short sessions. These results support the feasibility of trained symbolic vibrotactile cue delivery for a compact six-cue vocabulary in one head-mounted configuration in aquatic environments and provide an engineering foundation for future closed-loop aquatic feedback systems. aquatic environments Internet of Things (IoT) embedded systems haptic user interfaces human–machine systems vibrotactile actuators vibrotactile cueing wearable devices swimming vodna okolja internet stvari (IoT) vgrajeni sistemi haptični uporabniški vmesniki sistemi človek–stroj vibrotaktilni aktuatorji vibrotaktilno posredovanje signalov nosljive naprave plavanje true false true Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Članek v reviji 2026-09-24 12:41:45 2026-09-24 12:41:53 2026-09-26 03:35:41 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 19 str. issue 17, art. 8569 Vol. 16 Sep.-1 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno apc 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 004.5:681.5:797.2 2076-3417 10.3390/app16178569 292371715 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/16/17/8569 1 7cf7e94a-b804-11f1-8bc5-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=248889 applsci-16-08569.pdf applsci-16-08569.pdf 1 53F3A0AD308A1753987A7CBD36099A86 d94d7f864ebfc3a2160c957da78f543e8957db16d00714a656e0cf5c58f4249e a274f98f-b804-11f1-8bc5-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=248891 Fakulteta za elektrotehniko Naravoslovnotehniška fakulteta 0 0 0