Perception of tactile sensation using vibrotactile glove interface

This paper proposes a vibrotactile glove interface that enabled users to perceive tactile sensations of virtual objects. The proposed vibrotactile interface was designed to be easy-to-use, easily portable, and lightweight. Active touch might also be useful to realize informative tactile communication. To provide tactile stimuli based on movement of the fingers, five bending sensors were installed on the glove. In this study, the relationship of the correspondence between vibrotactile stimuli and tactile mental imagery was investigated. Subjects´ mental impressions of vibrotactile stimuli were measured by using the semantic differential (SD) method. Distinctive imagery from subjects´ answers was extracted for factor analysis. After that, a vibration stimuli model was applied to active touch. The tactile mental imagery of users was evaluated for both passive and active touches.