Towards Scalable Strain Gauge-Based Joint Torque Sensors.

During recent decades, strain gauge-based joint torque sensors have been commonly used to provide high-fidelity torque measurements in robotics. Although measurement of joint torque/force is often required in engineering research and development, the gluing and wiring of strain gauges used as torque sensors pose difficulties during integration within the restricted space available in small joints. The problem is compounded by the need for a scalable geometric design to measure joint torque.

An Integrated Approach to Characterize the Behavior of a Human Fingertip in Contact with a Silica Window.

Understanding the mechanisms of human tactual perception represents a challenging task in haptics and humanoid robotics. A classic approach to tackle this issue is to accurately and exhaustively characterize the mechanical behavior of human fingertip. The output of this characterization can then be exploited to drive the design of numerical models, which can be used to investigate in depth the mechanisms of human sensing.

A Finite element model of tactile flow for softness perception.

Touch is an extremely dynamic sense. To take into account this aspect, it has been hypothesized that there are mechanisms in the brain that specialize in processing dynamic tactile stimuli, in a way not too dissimilar from what happens for optical flow in dynamic vision. The concept of tactile flow, related to the rate of expansion of isostrain volumes in the human fingerpad, was used to explain some perceptual illusions as well as mechanisms of human softness perception.

How tactor size and density of normal indentation tactile displays affects grating discrimination tasks.

Tactile fingertip devices of vertically moving tactors have two important design parameters that significantly affect physical feedback and human tactile perception: tactor size and tactor density. However, there are a limited number of research studies that have evaluated the effect of these parameters on human tactile perception. This paper investigated the influence and interaction of these two parameters on a discrimination task.