Lacking or poor provision of comprehensive information about the spatial environment for the purposes of effective orientation is a problem that primarily affects the blind and partially sighted, but it can also cause difficulties for older people with increasing visual impairment. This research project in progress aims to obtain new scientific findings with regard to the basic suitability and ...

This paper focuses on the problem of in-hand object recognition with anthropomorphic robotic hands via artificial robotic skin. Using our proposed batch tactile transfer learning technique, the robotic hands can re-use their prior tactile knowledge to discriminate in-hand objects while using few number of training samples. The experimental results show that the Shadow Hand could manage to class...

Tactile experiences of textile materials are difficult to communicate and elicit. To interrogate this space we propose the tactile triangle, a framework to facilitate systematic analysis and comparison of tactile experiences. The three levels reflect different aspects of tactile experience and possible methods to capture them: physical properties, in which human senses or objective testing meas...

The present study tests whether age at onset of total blindness and the proportion of life-time without visual experience affect the haptic processing and recognition of tactile pictures in a sample of 20 totally blind adults. We also examine the type of mental strategy (visual, non-visual) used to perform the haptic recognition task. The results indicate that haptic processing of nonfigurative...

This paper describes research for development of a pregnancy simulator training tool. It addresses an important training need for enhanced skill training of the midwifery graduate. Midwives use tactile inspection of foetal position as a primary tool for decision making in the clinical setting. When the baby is lying in an abnormal position, it is important to be able to quickly recognise this a...

We investigated whether the visual hMT+ cortex plays a role in supramodal representation of sensory flow, not mediated by visual mental imagery. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural activity in sighted and congenitally blind individuals during passive perception of optic and tactile flows. Visual motion-responsive cortex, including hMT+, was identified in the lateral ...

Perception of our environment is a multisensory experience; information from different sensory systems like the auditory, visual and tactile is constantly integrated. Complex tasks that require high temporal and spatial precision of multisensory integration put strong demands on the underlying networks but it is largely unknown how task experience shapes multisensory processing. Long-term music...

Perceptual completion is a fundamental perceptual function serving to maintain robust perception against noise. For example, we can perceive vivid experience of motion even for the discrete inputs across time and space (apparent motion: AM). In vision, stimuli irrelevant AM are suppressed smooth along trajectory where no physical applied. We investigated whether such masking induced by dynamic ...

Recent developments in tactile technologies have made them an attractive choice to improve access to non-visual interfaces. This paper describes the design and evaluation of an extension to an existing browser, which enables blind individuals to explore web pages using tactile feedback. Pins are presented via a tactile mouse to communicate the presence of graphical interface objects. Findings f...