In tactile learning, sucrose is the unconditioned stimulus and reward, which is usually applied to the antenna to elicit proboscis extension and which the bee can drink when it is subsequently applied to the extended proboscis. The conditioned stimulus is a tactile object that the bee can scan with its antennae. In this paper we describe the quantitative relationships between gustatory antennal...

Tactile sensors capable of sensing normal and shearing force produced on a robotic finger and an object are useful for fitting a dextrose hand that can be applied to tasks that require human-like handling. Examples include such manufacturing tasks as assembly, disassembly, inspection, and materials handing. Especially in the case of humanoid robots, grasping slippery or flexible objects is requ...

Ideally, a tactile stimulator presents information through control of surface normal stress and surface shear stresses. Psy-chophysical experiments measured the eeect of shear stress information on the perception of static stimuli applied normal to the surface. Wax gratings in two diierent orientations and various spatial frequencies were used as stimuli. Elastic layers, representing the anti-a...

CONTEXT Therapeutic Touch (TT) is a widely used nursing practice rooted in mysticism but alleged to have a scientific basis. Practitioners of TT claim to treat many medical conditions by using their hands to manipulate a "human energy field" perceptible above the patient's skin. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether TT practitioners can actually perceive a "human energy field." DESIGN Twenty-one...

A human can lift up an object with almost minimal grasping force regardless of the fiction coefficient between the fingers and the object, but the sensing mechanism for this remarkable task has not been well explicated yet. In this paper we propose a tactile sensor to detect a fiction coefficient at the moment of touch. With this sensor output we evaluate the largest lifting-force just before a...

Tactile sensing is an essential component in many applications such as robotics, haptics, rehabilitation, electrotextiles, prosthetics and many more. In the light of greater focus on man-machine interaction, the importance of artificial tactile sensing as an important feedback tool is also growing. Starting with an overview of tactile sensing, in humans and robots, this chapter presents artific...

The Guidelines On Tactile and Haptic Interactions Conference (GOTHI-05) is the result of the realization of the need for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to standardize guidance on tactile/haptic interactions. This paper reviews existing international standards on tactile/haptic interactions and suggests ways to construct a relevant ISO standard. It proposes potential di...

We have designed and made a computer controlled, electrocutaneously stimulated, tactile display to assist in the interpretation of complex graphical data. This paper covers the initial experiments with the tactile display, complementing the standard VDU. An animated vector was generated and the absolute tactile directional acuity of the observers was measured. Consideration is given as to how t...

Tactile picture books are critical to the literacy skills and emotional development in young children with visual impairment. We report a formative study on new methods for designing and creating tactile pictures. We present two tactile picture books created by handcrafting and 3D printing respectively. We report evaluation of these books by experts, outcomes of our participation in a tactile p...

We present new results on reconstruction of the shape and motion of an unknown object using tactile sensors without requiring object immobilization. A robot manipulates the object with two flat palms covered with tactile sensors. We model the full dynamics and prove local observability of the shape, motion and center of mass of the object based on the motion of the contact points as measured by...