Abstract
The authors have developed tactile displays which have vibrating pins to convey the surface texture sensation of object surfaces to the user’s fingertip. The tactile sensation intensity scaling was performed to obtain a sensation scale of the display by means of the JND (just noticeable difference) method. One dimensional curves on the scale were displayed to investigate the human sensitivity to an intensity change rate. A tactile texture presentation method based on the image of an object surface is introduced. Two kinds of experiment were performed to discuss the feature of the method. Texture discrimination is the first one, in which the effect of texture element size to the correct separation was discussed. Then the sensations produced by the display and those by real objects were compared regarding several samples that had a major feature of vertical lines and of not containing low frequencies. The results are summarized, which is followed by the future research work.
ThermalTex: A Two-Modal Tactile Display for Delivering Surface Texture and Thermal Information