Transmission of Rubbing Sensation with Wearable Stick-Slip Display and Force Sensor

Abstract

This paper introduces a system of tactile transmission on the tip of index finger and reports the effect of skin deformation force and vibration on the friction sensation of the material. There are two sides for the system: tactile-sender and tactile-receiver. We used a force sensor to measure the dynamic friction of a material at the tactile sender side. Due to the amplitude of stick-slip vibration is very small and impossible to measure by the current force sensor, we attempted to investigate the effect of a sinewave form vibration that we processed by a computer software. A wearable stick-slip display with a cylindrical shape contactor was developed for the tactile-receiver side. Contactor is directly attached to a shaft of a DC motor. It was confirmed that, the DC motor can provide high fidelity vibration sensation, therefore, the contactor can present both skin deformation and stick-slip vibration. Experiment’s result showed that, the intensity of friction sensation of the participants did not proportional to the friction measured by a force senor. We considered that it was because the friction coefficient of the material attached to the end of the force sensor was different to that of human skin. Moreover, the result showed that, participants adjusted the strength of skin deformation stimulated by the tactile device stronger to perceive more similar to the rubbing sensation of a real material that has higher stickiness perception. We also confirmed that higher frequency of vibration affected the perception of slippery.