This article describes the design of a high-bandwidth, iron-less, recoil-based electromagnetic vibrotactile actuator. Its working principle, the theoretical analysis, the method used to determine its transfer function, its scaling properties and its design constraints are discussed along with its fabrication and possible improvements.
Locomotion generates multisensory information about walked-upon objects. How perceptual systems use such information to get to know the environment remains unexplored. The ability to identify solid (e.g., marble) and aggregate (e.g., gravel) walked-upon materials was investigated in auditory, haptic or audio-haptic conditions, and in a kinesthetic condition where tactile information was perturbed with a vibromechanical noise. Overall, identification performance was better than chance in all experimental conditions and for both solids and the better identified aggregates. Despite large mechanical differences between the response of solids and aggregates to locomotion, for both material categories discrimination was at its worst in the auditory and kinesthetic conditions and at its best in the haptic and audio-haptic conditions. An analysis of the dominance of sensory information in the audio-haptic context supported a focus on the most accurate modality, haptics, but only for the identification of solid materials. When identifying aggregates, response biases appeared to produce a focus on the least accurate modality--kinesthesia. When walking on loose materials such as gravel, individuals do not perceive surfaces by focusing on the most accurate modality, but by focusing on the modality that would most promptly signal postural instabilities.
The Coordinate Response Measure corpus was used to measure how extraneous head movements affect speech intelligibility in a simulated cocktail party situation in which two, four, or six concurrent talkers were spatialized over headphones using virtual 3D audio. In two conditions, participants oscillated their head along the yaw axis, aided by a visual target tracking task. In one condition, the changes in the spatial location of the talkers were compensated for (i.e., the talkers were world-fixed) while in the other there was no such compensation (i.e., the talkers were head-fixed). In an additional baseline condition, participants did not move their heads. The results show that extraneous head movements do not impair speech intelligibility in a cocktail party situation.
We investigated the role of haptic, proprioceptive and auditory information in the non-visual identification of walking grounds. We selected four solid materials (e.g., marble) and four aggregate materials (e.g., fine gravel). Five observers identified the materials in each of four experimental conditions: multisensory, haptic, proprioceptive, and auditory. In the auditory condition, they were presented with walking sounds they produced. In the other conditions, observers walked blindfolded on the materials. In the haptic and proprioceptive conditions auditory information was masked. In the proprioceptive condition haptic information was masked. No masking took place in the multisensory condition. In all conditions, solids and aggregates were seldom confused, and aggregates were better identified than solids. Chance identification performance was observed only for solids in the presence of simultaneous haptic and auditory masking, suggesting a secondary role of proprioceptive information. In the proprioceptive condition, identification of aggregates was better than chance, suggesting a significant role of proprioception. Identification of aggregates was at its best in the haptic condition, and not in the multisensory condition, suggesting either an inconsistency of information between auditory and non-auditory channels, or conflicting cognitive strategies for the exploitation of these sources of information in multisensory contexts.
Objective: Surgeons use probes during during minimally invasive arthroscopy as diagnostic tools to detect tissues anomalies. Improving tactile sensitivity during this activity would be valuable.Materials and Methods: We developed an enhanced probe that could heighten the tactile sensations experienced while probing objects. It operated by detecting the acceleration signal resulting from the interaction of the tool tip with surfaces and magnifying it for tactile and auditory reproduction. The instrument consisted of an accelerometer and an actuator arranged such that the sensing direction was orthogonal to the actuating direction so as to decouple input from output. Using the instrument, subjects were asked to detect cuts under four conditions: with no amplification, with enhanced tactile feedback, with sound feedback, and with passive touch.Results: We found that, for tactile reproduction, the current prototype could amplify the signals by 10 dB on average. Results from statistical methods showed significant improvements of performance in the case of tactile and auditory feedback.Conclusion: We developed a surgical probe with tactile and auditory feedback. Despite the moderate system gain achievable by the initial prototype, the system could measurably improve users' ability to detect small cuts in cartilage-like elastic surfaces.
Abstract. The MicroTactus is a family of instruments that we have designed to detect signals arising from the interaction of a tip with soft or hard objects and to magnify them for haptic and auditory reproduction. We constructed an enhanced arthroscopic surgical probe and tested it in detecting surface defects of a cartilage-like material. Elastomeric samples were cut at different depths and mixed with blank samples. Subjects were asked to detect the cuts under four conditions: no amplification, with haptic feedback, with sound feedback, and with passive touch. We found that both haptic and auditory feedback significantly improved detection performance, which demonstrated that an enhanced arthroscopic probe provided useful information for the detection of small cuts in tissue-like materials.
Objective: Surgeons use probes during during minimally invasive arthroscopy as diagnostic tools to detect tissues anomalies. Improving tactile sensitivity during this activity would be valuable.Materials and Methods: We developed an enhanced probe that could heighten the tactile sensations experienced while probing objects. It operated by detecting the acceleration signal resulting from the interaction of the tool tip with surfaces and magnifying it for tactile and auditory reproduction. The instrument consisted of an accelerometer and an actuator arranged such that the sensing direction was orthogonal to the actuating direction so as to decouple input from output. Using the instrument, subjects were asked to detect cuts under four conditions: with no amplification, with enhanced tactile feedback, with sound feedback, and with passive touch.Results: We found that, for tactile reproduction, the current prototype could amplify the signals by 10 dB on average. Results from statistical methods showed significant improvements of performance in the case of tactile and auditory feedback.Conclusion: We developed a surgical probe with tactile and auditory feedback. Despite the moderate system gain achievable by the initial prototype, the system could measurably improve users' ability to detect small cuts in cartilage-like elastic surfaces.
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