When manipulating objects, we use kinesthetic and tactile information to form an internal representation of their mechanical properties for cognitive perception and for preventing their slippage using predictive control of grip force. A major challenge in understanding the dissociable contributions of tactile and kinesthetic information to perception and action is the natural coupling between them. Unlike previous studies that addressed this question either by focusing on impaired sensory processing in patients or using local anesthesia, we used a behavioral study with a programmable mechatronic device that stretches the skin of the fingertips to address this issue in the intact sensorimotor system. We found that artificial skin-stretch increases the predictive grip force modulation in anticipation of the load force. Moreover, the stretch causes an immediate illusion of touching a harder object that does not depend on the gradual development of the predictive modulation of grip force.

Tactile stimulation devices are gaining popularity in haptic science and technologythey are lightweight, low-cost, can be easily made wearable, and do not suffer from instability during closed loop interactions with users. Applying tactile stimulation in the form of stretching the skin of the fingerpads, concurrently with kinesthetic force feedback, has been shown to augment the perceived stiffness during interactions with elastic objects. However, all of the studies to date have investigated the perceptual augmentation effects of artificial skin-stretch in the absence of visual feedback. We investigated how visual displacement feedback affects the augmentation of perceived stiffness caused by the skin-stretch. We used a forced-choice paradigm stiffness discrimination task with four different conditions: force feedback, force feedback with artificial skin-stretch, force and visual feedback, and force and visual feedback with artificial skinstretch. We found that visual displacement feedback weakens the skin-stretch induced perceptual augmentation and improves the stiffness discrimination sensitivity.

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Tactile stimulation devices are gaining popularity in haptic science and technology – they are lightweight, low-cost, can be easily made wearable, and do not suffer from instability during closed loop interactions with users. Applying tactile stimulation in the form of stretching the skin of the fingerpads, concurrently with kinesthetic force feedback, has been shown to augment the perceived stiffness during interactions with elastic objects. However, all of the studies to date have investigated the perceptual augmentation effects of artificial skin-stretch in the absence of visual feedback. We investigated how visual displacement feedback affects the augmentation of perceived stiffness caused by the skin-stretch. We used a forced-choice paradigm stiffness discrimination task with four different conditions: force feedback, force feedback with artificial skin-stretch, force and visual feedback, and force and visual feedback with artificial skin-stretch. We found that visual displacement feedback weakens the skin-stretch induced perceptual augmentation and improves the stiffness discrimination sensitivity.