A tactile display using human characteristic of sensory fusion

In general, it is difficult to present tactile information due to arbitrary curvatures of the curved surface and many degrees of freedom needed to be realized. On the other hand, psychophysical studies suggested that human visual and tactile sensations have an illusory fusion characteristic. It means that we can recognize curved surfaces of objects through visual and tactile sensations, even if exact tactile information is not presented. Hence, by utilizing the human characteristic of sensory fusion, realization of a tactile display can be simplified. From such motivation, the human fusion characteristics of visual and tactile sensation are measured, and are quantitatively analyzed. Based on the analyzed results, a tactile display is developed. In the tactile display, only four curved patterns are utilized instead of presenting many curved patterns. Performance of the developed tactile display is proved through evaluated experiments