Tactile Display using “Suction Pressure
Stimulation”
Principle
This research is based on our discovery that
“human can not discriminate Suction from Compression.” As shown in the figure, we feel pushed sensation
by suction pressure.
This tactile illusion indicates
that tactile mechanoreceptors detect not stress or strain tensor directly, but Strain energy. To confirm this
hypothesis, we analyzed the strain energy distributions under the skin surface
using Finite Element Method. The distributions seem different between two
cases, as shown in the upper figure. However, when we focus on the
mechanoreceptor level (drawn with red lines), the distributions are similar
each other (lower figure). We suppose this is the reason why the human can not
discriminate suction from compression.
Advantages
One of the advantages of the Suction Pressure
Stimulation is that we can give stable stimulation to the skin.
Because …
1) Little interference between each stimulator occurs,
since the skin deformation only occurs within a suction hole.
2) Skin surface is strongly constrained on the display surface by suction
pressure even when the intense stimulus was given.
Main actuators (air valves and regulators)
can be set away from the display part by connecting them with thin air tubes.
That is, suction pressure tactile display only requires small holes at the
contact point. The display is easy to fabricate lightly and mountable anywhere.
Settings (at World HAPTICS 2005)
Yasutoshi Makino yasutoc@alab.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp