Development of a fuzzy inclusion measure for investigating relations between visual and tactile perception of textile products

In our daily life, much information related to tactile properties of natural objects can also be perceived by our eyes. This is because our brain has a very sophisticated mechanism permitting to associate the memories obtained from different sensory channels and make them work as a whole. In the present study, given a set of representative textile fabrics, a number of standardized sensory experiments were carried out by a panel of trained textile experts under the real-touch, video and image conditions, respectively. A novel algorithm based on the rough sets theory and the fuzzy sets theory was proposed in order to investigate from the evaluation data the extent to which the tactile properties of a fabric can be interpreted through specific visual representations of the corresponding apparel product. The obtained results confirm that most of the tactile information can be perceived correctly by the assessors through either the video or image displays, while a better performance is detected in the video scenarios. Finally, upon the analysis results, some significant suggestions were put forward to modify the available visual displays, in order to better illustrate fabric´s tactile properties in a non-haptic environment.