Skin-propagated vibration for roughness and textures

We perceive tactile sensations on the basis of vibration elicited on our skin. The skin vibration involves fingertip's skin properties of each person. Therefore, measurement of the skin vibration might be useful for quantitative evaluation of subjective tactile sensations. In this paper, we conducted the experiment for various roughness and textures with a wearable skin vibration sensor to investigate the relationship between the sensor output and roughness or textures. The sensor can detect skin-propagated vibration elicited by rubbing an object. We calculated power spectral density of skin vibration from the sensor output. The resulting output was discussed in aspects of roughness rating, texture identification and subjective tactile perception. The results showed that the sensor has a potential of quantitative rating of roughness by the intensity, and both the intensity and the center of frequency of sensor outputs are available to identify textures.