trials for various applications, and been approved for assistance to the blind in the UK. Alternatively, the roof of the mouth has been proposed as another area where low currents can be felt. Electrostatic arrays are explored as human–computer interaction devices for touch screens. These are based on a phenomenon called electrovibration, which allows microamperre-level currents to be felt as roughness on a surface. Vibrotactile systems use the properties of mechanoreceptors in the skin so they have fewer parameters that need to be monitored as compared to electrotactile stimulation. However, vibrotactile stimulation systems need to account for the rapid adaptation of the tactile sense. Another important aspect of tactile sensory substitution systems is the location of the tactile stimulation. Tactile receptors are abundant on the fingertips, face, and tongue while sparse on the back, legs and arms. It is essential to take into account the spatial resolution of the receptor as it has a major effect on the resolution of the sensory substitution. A high resolution pin-arrayed display is able to present spatial information via tactile symbols, such as city maps and obstacle maps. Below you can find some descriptions of current tactile substitution systems. Tactile–visual One of the earliest and most well known form of sensory substitution devices was Paul Bach-y-Rita's TVSS that converted the image from a video camera into a tactile image and coupled it to the tactile receptors on the back of his blind subject. Recently, several new systems have been developed that interface the tactile image to tactile receptors on different areas of the body such as the on the chest, brow, fingertip, abdomen, and forehead. The tactile image is produced by hundreds of activators placed on the person. The activators are solenoids of one millimeter diameter. In experiments, blind (or blindfolded) subjects equipped with the TVSS can learn to detect shapes and to orient themselves. In the case of simple geometric shapes, it took around 50 trials to achieve 100 percent correct recognition. To identify objects in different orientations requires several hours of learning. A system using the tongue as the human–machine interface is most practical. The tongue–machine interface is both protected by the closed mouth and the saliva in the mouth provides a good electrolytic environment that ensures good electrode contact. Results from a study by Bach-y-Rita et al. show that electrotactile stimulation of the tongue required 3% of the voltage required to