Design and evaluation of a haptic tactile actuator to simulate rough textures

This paper presents the design of a tactile actuator that creates rough textures directly at the fingertip of the user. The purpose of the tactile actuator is to convey varying magnitudes of surface roughness to the users. The stimulus is created by a rotating spiral brush. The results of a psychophysical experiment show that the speed of the brush is directly related to roughness perception. However, there are two groups of users that perceive roughness in an opposite manner from each other.