Multi-fingered hand system for telepresence based on tactile information

In the bilateral teleoperator systems, transferring tactile information from a slave to a human operator is very important in order to improve the presence in the master side. The coiled nerve structure of the Meissner corpuscles can separately detect stretch and shear deformation of the skin that is caused by various frictional conditions. Based on this property, a biomimetic coiled tactile sensor involved in the non-uniform elastic skin has been developed in this study. In this paper, it is confirmed that this novel sensor can measure a friction coefficient just after the contact. Furthermore, the lifting of the slippery tapered object by the pinch grip is dealt with as a precision task. In the experiment of teleoperation, the human subject could adequately regulate the coordination between the grip force and the vertical lifting force by utilizing the frictional information from the tactile display.