This paper presents a novel wearable tactile haptic display for rendering soft body sensations to multiple fingertips with electroactive smart elastomers. The system uses newly developed multi-layered hydrostatically coupled dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs), which have been designed to apply a localised tunable force to a user’s fingertip via a soft electrically-deformable interface. The s...

In this paper, we quantify several spatial capabilities of the hmnan tactile system needed for tactile feedback, or teletaction. Psychophysics experiments measure the amplitude resolution of the human tactile system, the effects of shear stress on grating orientation discrimination, and the effects of viscoelasticity {creep and relaxation) on tactile perception for static touch. The results are...

This paper proposes a kinesthetic–tactile fusion feedback system based on virtual interaction. Combining the results of human fingertip deformation characteristics analysis and an upper limb motion mechanism, tactile device arm kinesthetic are designed analyzed for blind instructors. In order to verify effectiveness method, touch experiments established through mapping relationship between mast...

Human skin is innervated with different tactile afferents, which are found at varying densities over the body. We investigate how the relationships between tactile pleasantness, sensitivity and discrimination differ across the skin. Tactile pleasantness was assessed by stroking a soft brush over the skin, using five velocities (0.3, 1, 3, 10, 30 cm s(-1)), known to differentiate hedonic touch, ...

Through highly precise perceptual and sensorimotor activities, the human tactile system continuously acquires information about the environment. Mechanical interactions between the skin at the point of contact and a touched surface serve as the source of this tactile information. Using a dedicated custom robotic platform, we imaged skin deformation at the contact area between the finger and a f...

We investigate the mechanism of tactile transduction during active exploration of finely textured surfaces using a tactile sensor mimicking the human fingertip. We focus in particular on the role of exploratory conditions in shaping the subcutaneous mechanical signals. The sensor has been designed by integrating a linear array of MEMS micro-force sensors in an elastomer layer. We measure the re...

In this dissertation, we explore the use of tactile force sensors to understand properties of the surfaces of objects they are pressed against. We develop a model of such sensors as imaging devices, which facilitates the use of techniques from computer vision and image processing with the “tactile images” they provide. The goal is object recognition, and three approaches are presented for disti...

A hybrid tactile sensor system is proposed for a robot hand to hold and grip an object adaptively as the sensor system measures the slip of an object, the gripping force, and the deformation of its silicon rubber sensor element. A hybrid tactile sensor system consists of a Carbon Micro‐Coil (CMC) touch sensor and a force sensor. The CMC sensor element is made of silicon...

Imitating the human skin structure, an arrayed type tactile sensor composed of many force sensing elements distributed on four stories is proposed. The information processing method for this sensor using neural network (NN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) is investigated. Since a practical sensor is under development, the finite element method (FEM) simulation is employed to simulate the data ...