Inside Touch: Presentation of Tactile Feeling Inside Virtual Object Using Finger-Mounted Pin-Array Display

Previously, tactile displays focused on the tactile presentation of the surface of a virtual object. In contrast, this study attempts to provide a tactile feeling on the space inside a virtual object when fingers penetrate it. Our previous study developed a finger-mounted pin-array display with the smallest pin pitch, representing the highest spatial resolution. Using the display, we attempt to present the tactile impression of “Rough,” “Grainy,” and “Sparse” which correspond to Japanese onomatopoeia of “Zara-Zara,” “Tsubu-Tsubu,” or “Chiri-Chiri” with simple patterned stimuli arranged in 3D space. A series of experiments were conducted in this study to determine the following: (1) the stimuli that can provide users with different tactile impressions inside objects and (2) the effect of tactile display spatial resolution on the recognition of tactile impressions inside objects. The results clarified that we could provide three different tactile impressions in space with certain stimuli configurations. Besides, the results demonstrated that participants recognized the tactile impression better with a larger spatial resolution configuration of the device. This study reveals a new field of tactile presentation, that is, tactile presentation inside an object.