Intersubjective Tactile Sharing Method Based on Human Skin Vibration Characteristics

Tactile sensation is essential for recognizing mechanical interactions between the human body and its environment; it is generally uniquely experienced by individuals. Haptic sharing technologies enable to share of other person’s (or robot’s) tactile sensations, and it is expected to apply for skill learning, collaborative work, and robot operation. While wearable tactile sensors are useful for tactile measurements, they are affected by differences in physical characteristics between individuals. Therefore, to accurately convey the tactile information felt by others and utilize it for work, it is necessary to remove individual differences due to differences in individual physical characteristics. In this study, based on the frequency based intensity of skin vibration of an individual, the vibration detected by the acceleration sensor affixed to the fingertip was modulated to remove individual differences. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method, we investigated both physical and perceptual similarities for skin vibrations collected from three persons with three different fine textures. The results showed that vibrations individually modulated with the proposed method was similar in the intensity and power spectrum density than those using the uniform modulation function, and was perceived similar when presenting those with a vibrator.