Operation Identification by Shared Tactile Perception Based on Skin Vibration

Abstract

Tactile sensation contributes to sensory-motor control and facilitates skillful manipulation of objects. If the tactile sensation can be shared between two partners, the state of each partner can be partially observed by the other, and the possibilities for cooperative work may be expanded. Recently, examples of utilizing tactile sensation in human-robot cooperative work have been proposed. For cooperative work between people, it is necessary to investigate the basic ability of humans to identify other person's motions and operations by tactile presentation. To avoid hindering work performed with the hands and fingertips, the sensation must be presented elsewhere. This study investigates the possibility of identifying other person's tool operations by presenting tactile information induced on his/her finger with a wearable vibrator on the arm. A wearable skin vibration sensor was employed to acquire tactile information during an experiment in which five different tool operations were tested. This sensor measures skin vibration while directly touching the target. We proposed a non-linear signal processing function to adjust the intensity of the skin vibration to within the range of human sensitivity for tactile presentation. We compared vibrotactile stimulation between the non-linear and linear corrections, and then conducted experiments on identifying operations. The results showed that the non-linear correction increased small signals and enhanced the variance of large signals, and that operations were significantly identified by tactile presentation to the arm.