A Wearable Tactile Sensor Array for Large Area Remote Vibration Sensing in the Hand

In order to engineer haptic technologies for the hand, knowledge about what signals are felt during natural interactions is needed. The findings from Chaps. 3 and 4 demonstrate the utility of examining distributed tactile vibrations accompanying whole-hand haptic interactions. However, existing sensing devices cannot capture the full range of tactile information in the naturally behaving hand and are unable to match human abilities of perception and action. Thus, in this chapter presents the design of a new sensor apparatus, comprising a 126-channel wearable tactile sensor array, that is adapted to the anatomy of the hand, and that corresponds to the frequency sensitivity range of human tactile sensing. This device permits tactile sensing in vivo without kinematic constraints on hand movements. It provides new methods for collecting tactile data outside of constrained laboratory experiments, physiologically informed signal processing methods for reconstructing whole-hand tactile signals, and new methods for distributed tactile sensing that may have applications in robotics, upper-limb prosthetics, and other domains.