Prosthetic finger phalanges with lifelike skin compliance for low-force social touching interactions

Cabibihan, John-John; Pradipta, Raditya; Ge, Shuzhi Sam

doi:10.1186/1743-0003-8-16

Cited by 32 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The lower Shore durometer value corresponds to a softer material. The materials were selected based on their usage in earlier works on prosthetic or robotic skins [28,29], embedding materials for tactile sensors [30,31] and for soft robotics [32,33]. All the skin samples were fabricated using standard moulding techniques.…”

Section: B Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Illusory Sense of Human Touch From a Warm and Soft Artificial Hand

Cabibihan

Joshi

Srinivasa

et al. 2015

IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng.

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To touch and be touched are vital to human development, well-being, and relationships. However, to those who have lost their arms and hands due to accident or war, touching becomes a serious concern that often leads to psychosocial issues and social stigma. In this paper, we demonstrate that the touch from a warm and soft rubber hand can be perceived by another person as if the touch were coming from a human hand. We describe a three-step process toward this goal. First, we made participants select artificial skin samples according to their preferred warmth and softness characteristics. At room temperature, the preferred warmth was found to be 28.4 °C at the skin surface of a soft silicone rubber material that has a Shore durometer value of 30 at the OO scale. Second, we developed a process to create a rubber hand replica of a human hand. To compare the skin softness of a human hand and artificial hands, a robotic indenter was employed to produce a softness map by recording the displacement data when constant indentation force of 1 N was applied to 780 data points on the palmar side of the hand. Results showed that an artificial hand with skeletal structure is as soft as a human hand. Lastly, the participants' arms were touched with human and artificial hands, but they were prevented from seeing the hand that touched them. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis suggests that a warm and soft artificial hand can create an illusion that the touch is from a human hand. These findings open the possibilities for prosthetic and robotic hands that are life-like and are more socially acceptable.

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Section: B Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Illusory Sense of Human Touch From a Warm and Soft Artificial Hand

Cabibihan

Joshi

Srinivasa

et al. 2015

IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng.

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“…A strain energy function, U, defined in Storakers [16] for highly compressible elastomers was used to describe the hyperelastic behaviour of the synthetic materials. This has been found to achieve good fits on the experimental data of synthetic materials [14] and it was likewise implemented in a human fingertip model in [17] and a 3D model of a finger phalange in [18]. The function is given as:…”

Section: B Indentation Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Influence of the skin thickness on tactile shape discrimination

Cabibihan

Carrozza

2012

2012 4th IEEE RAS &Amp; EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob)

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Abstract²Tactile sensors are important for robotic or prosthetic hands, which are designed for manipulation of objects. These sensors are normally embedded in soft, elastic materials for protecting the subsurface sensor from damage or for better hand-to-object contact. In this paper, various thicknesses of the synthetic skin were investigated to determine their effects on the signals that will be detected by the embedded sensor. A finite element model of an artificial fingertip, which was based on viscoelastic and hyperelastic behavior, was used. It was shown that the synthetic skin blurs the signals that are transmitted to the embedded sensor. In short, the thicker the material, the more it will be difficult for the embedded sensor to discriminate the shape that is indented on the surface. These results are helpful to guide the specifications of the skin thickness of artificial skins with embedded tactile sensing.

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“…The synthetic skins were assumed to behave with hyperelastic and viscoelastic properties [18,19]. As such, the total stress was made equivalent to the sum of the hyperelastic (HE) stress and the viscoelastic (VE) stress such that: 2 where t is the time.…”

Section: Materials Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Embedding these tactile sensors in soft, synthetic skins have been reported to give many advantages. Among these include skin compliance for better robotic grasping and manipulation [6][7][8][9]; skin conformance for curvature, shape or object recognition [10][11][12][13]; adding fingerprint-like designs on the skin to localize contact information for roughness or texture detection [14][15][16][17]; and soft skin properties for social acceptance in human-robot interaction [18][19][20]. Given these benefits, it is evident that the mechanical behaviour of the artificial skins should be understood for a EFFECTS OF THE ARTIFICIAL SKIN'S THICKNESS ON on the transducers, whereas the whole tactile system involves the equally important modules of the skin, data transmission, conditioning and data interpretation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the Artificial Skin's Thickness on the Subsurface Pressure Profiles of Flat, Curved, and Braille Surfaces

2014

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The primary interface of contact between a robotic or prosthetic hand and the external world is through the artificial skin. To make sense of that contact, tactile sensors are needed. These sensors are normally embedded in soft synthetic materials for protecting the subsurface sensor from damage or for better hand-to-object contact. It is important to understand how the mechanical signals transmit from the artificial skin to the embedded tactile sensors. In this paper, we made use of a finite element model of an artificial fingertip with viscoelastic and hyperelastic behaviors to investigate the subsurface pressure profiles when flat, curved, and Braille surfaces were indented on the surface of the model. Furthermore, we investigated the effects of 1, 3, and 5 mm thickness of the skin on the subsurface pressure profiles. The simulation results were experimentally validated using a 25.4 µm thin pressure detecting film that was able to follow the contours of a non-planar surface, which is analogous to an artificial bone. Results show that the thickness of the artificial skin has an effect on the peak pressure, on the span of the pressure distribution, and on the overall shape of the pressure profile that was encoded on a curved subsurface structure. Furthermore, the flat, curved, and Braille surfaces can be discriminated from one another with the 1 and 3 mm artificial skin layers, but not with the 5 mm thick skin.

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Prosthetic finger phalanges with lifelike skin compliance for low-force social touching interactions

Cited by 32 publications

References 26 publications

Illusory Sense of Human Touch From a Warm and Soft Artificial Hand

Illusory Sense of Human Touch From a Warm and Soft Artificial Hand

Influence of the skin thickness on tactile shape discrimination

Effects of the Artificial Skin's Thickness on the Subsurface Pressure Profiles of Flat, Curved, and Braille Surfaces

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