Abstract
The human finger plays an extremely important role in tactile perception, but little is known about the role of its biophysical properties (mechanical properties, contact properties and surface topography) in tactile perception. In addition, the touch gestures used to perceive an object’s properties differ among people. We combined studies on the biophysical properties and the vibrations measured from the human finger to understand the age and gender effects on the tactile perception and the difference between the touch gestures. In addition, a new algorithm, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), was used to analyze the vibratory signal obtained from the physical contact of the finger, and a surface is proposed and validated. The values obtained regarding the correlation between the tribohaptic system results and the biophysical properties show that the Young’s modulus and the surface topography are the most important. An inverse correlation was observed between the MFCC and the tactile perception. This last observation explained the results of better tactile perception with left to right touch gestures. It also demonstrated a better tactile perception for women.
Highlights
People can perceive the properties, contact, shape, hardness and roughness of an object within a few seconds of physical contact
The new part in this article is that we used the Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) algorithm to analyze the data collected previously, and we compared these results to those obtained in the previous article with the vibratory level
The objective of this study was to understand the effects of age, gender and touch gestures on tactile perception via the biophysical properties of the human finger
Summary
People can perceive the properties, contact, shape, hardness and roughness of an object within a few seconds of physical contact. Meissner’s corpuscles (RA), Pacinian corpuscles (PC), Merkel’s disks (SA I) and Ruffini’s corpuscles (SA II)[7,8], are responsible for touch sensation, pressure, vibrations and cutaneous tension that result from mechanical deformations due to contact between the finger and the object touched. This deformation is converted into different specific electrical signals[9,10]. The vibratory level, La, and the dynamic friction coefficient, μ, are the parameters most commonly used to study surface texture by analyzing the vibratory signals and force signals, respectively
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