Human tactile perception as a standard for artificial tactile sensing—a review

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the most important features of human skin tactile properties with special emphasis on the characteristics which are vital in the design of artificial systems. Contrary to the visual and auditory senses, the touch signal is not a well-defined quantity. As a result, the researchers of this field are still dealing with the basics of collecting the most relevant data. Following this, mimicking the sense of touch by producing artificial tactile skin is a challenging process. Although the sense of touch is widely distributed all over the human body, the tactile perception in the human hand is of great importance in terms of surgical and medical robotics applications. In this study, the role of various mechanoreceptors in the human hand, such as, RA, SA I, SA II, and PC units are discussed in relation to the stimuli like force, position, softness, and surface texture. Taking human hand as a suitable tactile model, the necessary engineering features of an artificial tactile sensor, such as, spatial and temporal resolutions, force sensitivity, and linearity, are being reviewed. In this work, we also report on the current and possible future applications of tactile sensors in various surgical procedures.

Electromechanical characterization of piezoelectric PVDF polymer films for tactile sensors in robotics applications

“…[6][7][8] in the considered frequency range, in accordance with the literature [16]. As before, the measurements are not influenced by long-time relaxations.…”

“…Used as isolated sensors/actuators or assembled into more complex multimodal devices, they offer challenging solutions in many application fields including robotics. For these reasons they can be regarded as interesting candidates for tactile sensors [6].…”

Touching a Mechanical Body: Tactile Contact With Body Parts of a Humanoid Robot Is Physiologically Arousing

“…Understanding the social implications of this medium is critical to media psychology. Touch is a distinctive interaction mode of robots afforded by their physical presence (Dargahi & Najarian, 2004;Li, 2015). Natural physical contact between people and "personal service robots" (International Federation of Robotics, 2005) could be beneficial, yet it is unclear how physiological effects of interpersonal touch apply to social robots.…”

Vibrotactile evaluation: Osseointegrated versus socket-suspended transfemoral prostheses

“…There are various QST methods, such as a simple patient answer of yes or no whether stimuli could be identified [24], choice between one out of two time periods that include stimuli [25], or when the patient is asked to press a button when a vibration stimuli is perceived and to press again when the stimulus disappears (the method of limits) [26]. Sensibility studies using vibration as stimuli have shown that mechanoreceptors in the skin can detect vibration frequencies between 0.4 and 800 Hz [27]. However, most published clinical data are from studies on patients with various type of neuropathic conditions [28][29], and in those studies, vibration frequencies between 20 and 250 Hz have been used as stimuli [28][29][30].…”