Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Using 3-Degree-of-Freedom Skin Deformation Feedback

Quek, Zhan Fan; Schorr, S; Nisky, Ilana; Provancher, William R.; Okamura, Allison M.

doi:10.1109/toh.2015.2398448

Cited by 61 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…In a sensory substitution study, a tactor-induced skin-stretch device was successfully implemented to convey stiffness information in a teleoperated palpation task, and was more accurate than the widely used vibration feedback . Skin-stretch has also been used to convey direction (Gleeson, Horschel & Provancher 2009), augment friction (Provancher, Sylvester 2009), and replace kinesthetic information in navigation tasks (Quek et al 2015a). These findings clearly establish that stretching the skin of the finger pads augments perception, but they do not provide any information about the role of skin-stretch information in the control of grip force.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, the tactile stimulation devices provide the opportunity to partially disrupt the natural coupling between tactile and kinesthetic information, and dissociate the effects of tactile and kinesthetic channels from the human control of grip force when all the sensory and motor components are intact and not anesthetized. Two recent studies using this technology yielded conflicting evidence on the effect of skin-stretch on grip force: in (Quek et al 2015a) the mean grip force increased due to skin-stretch, whereas in (Quek et al 2015b) the mean grip force was not affected. These two studies however only examined the effect of adding artificial skin-stretch on the change in mean grip force, and not on the detailed changes in the different components of grip force as a function of the change in load force and skin-stretch deformation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stretching the skin of the fingertip creates a perceptual and motor illusion of touching a harder spring

Farajian

Leib

Zaidenberg

et al. 2017

Preprint

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We investigated how artificial tactile feedback in the form of a skin-stretch affects perception of stiffness and grip force adjustment. During interactions with objects, information from kinesthetic and tactile sensors is used to estimate the forces acting on the limbs. These enable the perception of the mechanical properties of objects to form, and the creation of internal models to predict the consequences of interactions with these objects, such as feedforward grip-force adjustments to prevent slippage. Previous studies showed that an artificial stretch of the skin of the fingertips can produce a linear additive effect on stiffness perception, but it remains unclear how such stretch affects the control of grip force. Here, we used a robotic device and a custom-built skin-stretch device to manipulate kinesthetic and tactile information. Using a stiffness discrimination task, we found that adding artificial tactile feedback to a kinesthetic force can create the illusion of touching a harder spring which affects both perception and action. The magnitude of the illusion is linearly related to the amplitude of the applied stretch. We also isolated the contribution of tactile stimulation to the predictive and reactive components of grip force adjustment, and found that unlike in other cases of perceptual illusions, the predictive grip force is . CC-BY-NC-ND4.0 International license peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under aThe copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/203604 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Oct. 15, 2017; 2 modulated consistently with the perceptual tactile-induced illusion. These results have major implications for the design of tactile interfaces across a variety of touch applications such as wearable haptic devices, teleoperations, robot-assisted surgery, and prosthetics.Keywords: grip force control, stiffness perception, skin-stretch, sensory augmentation, predictive control, reactive control. Significance StatementSensing forces, using kinesthetic and tactile modalities, is important for assessing the mechanical properties of objects, and for acting the objects while stabilizing grasp against slippage. A major challenge in understanding the internal representations that allow for a predictive grip force control during contact with objects is to dissociate the contribution of tactile and kinesthetic stimuli. To date, this contribution was investigated only in impaired cases either through local anesthesia or in patients with sensory impairment. Our study demonstrates using a programmable mechatronic device that artificially applied skinstretch creates an illusion of a greater load force that affects grip force control and stiffness perception. These results are applicable in tactile technologies for wearable haptic devices, teleoperation, robot-assisted surgery, and prosthetics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stretching the skin of the fingertip creates a perceptual and motor illusion of touching a harder spring

Farajian

Leib

Zaidenberg

et al. 2017

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Another proposed measure is Extended Rate Hardness, a measure of the perceived hardness of a surface based on rate of force change and penetration velocity (Han and Choi, 2010). Skin deformation accompanying the probing also likely plays a role in perception of stiffness (Quek et al, 2014, Quek et al, 2015, Farajian et al, 2017). Here, we do not attempt to spill more light on this matter, but it is possible that the estimated stiffness is used in the process of the switching.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smart switching in feedforward control of grip force during manipulation of elastic objects

White

Karniel

Leib

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Switching systems are common in artificial control systems. Here, we suggest that the brain adopts a switched feedforward control of grip forces during manipulation of objects. We measured how participants modulated grip force when interacting with soft and rigid virtual springs when stiffness varied nearly continuously between trials. We identified a sudden phase transition between two forms of feedforward control that differed in the timing of the synchronization between the anticipated load force and the applied grip force. The switch occurred several trials after a threshold stiffness level. These results suggest that in the control of grip force, the brain acts as a switching control system. This opens new research questions as to the nature of the discrete state variables that drive the switching.

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“…Only the device proposed by Quek et al (2015) can display three DoF forces. This device can display tactile feedback to three fingers at the same time but the displayed feedbacks are interdependent that limits the possibilities of tactile rendering.…”

Section: Tactor Displacementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among these stimuli, the skin stretch, which displays shear forces (tangential forces to the surface of the skin), drew our attention as it was found to greatly improve user performance during interactions with virtual environments such as for path following tasks (Kuchenbecker et al, 2004), or perception of friction (Kurita et al, 2011), or stiffness (Quek et al, 2015). Skin stretch can be produced by the weight of objects grasped in hand or by the forces applied on them (Minamizawa et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

HapTip: Displaying Haptic Shear Forces at the Fingertips for Multi-Finger Interaction in Virtual Environments

et al. 2016

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The fingertips are one of the most important and sensitive parts of our body. They are the first stimulated areas of the hand when we interact with our environment. Providing haptic feedback to the fingertips in virtual reality could, thus, drastically improve perception and interaction with virtual environments. In this paper, we present a modular approach called HapTip to display such haptic sensations at the level of the fingertips. This approach relies on a wearable and compact haptic device able to simulate 2 Degree of Freedom (DoF) shear forces on the fingertip with a displacement range of ±2 mm. Several modules can be added and used jointly in order to address multi-finger and/or bimanual scenarios in virtual environments. For that purpose, we introduce several haptic rendering techniques to cover different cases of 3D interaction, such as touching a rough virtual surface, or feeling the inertia or weight of a virtual object. In order to illustrate the possibilities offered by HapTip, we provide four use cases focused on touching or grasping virtual objects. To validate the efficiency of our approach, we also conducted experiments to assess the tactile perception obtained with HapTip. Our results show that participants can successfully discriminate the directions of the 2 DoF stimulation of our haptic device. We found also that participants could well perceive different weights of virtual objects simulated using two HapTip devices. We believe that HapTip could be used in numerous applications in virtual reality for which 3D manipulation and tactile sensations are often crucial, such as in virtual prototyping or virtual training.

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Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Using 3-Degree-of-Freedom Skin Deformation Feedback

Cited by 61 publications

References 34 publications

Stretching the skin of the fingertip creates a perceptual and motor illusion of touching a harder spring

Stretching the skin of the fingertip creates a perceptual and motor illusion of touching a harder spring

Smart switching in feedforward control of grip force during manipulation of elastic objects

HapTip: Displaying Haptic Shear Forces at the Fingertips for Multi-Finger Interaction in Virtual Environments

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