Tactile sensation transmission from a robotic arm to the human body via a haptic interface

Abstract

This paper presents a robotic system that was used to study the restoration of touch sensitivity. This approach could improve the lives of people who suffer from having lost organs or upper-limbs. Here, a combination of tactile sensors, robotic fingers, and a haptic interface enabled us to undertake different types of experiments on human subjects. To this end, we have conducted two separate tests on eight human subjects in order to assess the effectiveness of the static and dynamic modalities in different detectable ranges of the skin sensitivity. As of now, overall results show the relative functionality of the proposed mechanism for further experimental research. Under a static condition we received better restitution feedback at the lowest and highest magnitude levels, compared to the two in-between levels. The lowest and highest magnitude levels, 2N and 8N respectively, had an overall success rate of 75%, while the two middle levels, 4N and 6N, had a success rate of 43%. Under a dynamic condition, results showed that the whole system could adequately convey texture information via vibrations, and that it allowed subjects to successfully differentiate textures 78.33% of the time.