Analysis of fingertip/fabric friction-induced vibration signals toward vibrotactile rendering

Abstract

Recent publications on virtual reality and augmented reality have highlighted the possibility of inducing the tactile sensation of surface texture by exciting the fingertip skin with appropriate vibration. When fingertip and object surface are in contact with a relative motion, the sliding between the two surfaces generate vibrations, however, the link between friction-induced vibrations features and textile surface characteristics has not been fully investigated. This study will explore the dependence of different vibrational components on the constructional parameters of woven fabrics. This is achieved by measuring the friction-induced vibration with bare fingertip and analyzing the relationship of extracted vibration features with constructional details of woven fabrics. The results show that the yarn densities majorly affect the normal vibration intensity, the yarn fineness, and the weave pattern that determine the tangential components of vibration intensity, and the fundamental frequency of vibration spectrum characterizes the periodic surface textures of woven fabric. Generally, both normal and tangential components of friction-induced vibration signals represent the constructional specifications of woven fabrics, and they can be used to define objective indexes and reproducible stimuli of the perceived surface characteristics in vibrotactile rendering.