The main focus on this section is " Interfaces and Interaction ". Computer display is an interface showing the information to human visually. For providing with information from human to computer (or robots), there are many interface devices, such as force sensor, acceleration sensor, velocity sensor, position sensor, tactile sensor, vision and so forth. EMG and EEG signals are also utilized as...

Touch is one of the primary senses humans use when performing coordinated interaction, but the lack of a sense of touch in the majority of contemporary interactive technical systems, such as robots, which operate in non-deterministic environments, results in interactions that can at best be described as clumsy. Observing human haptics and extracting the salient information from the gathered dat...

A compliant 2×2 tactile sensor array was developed and investigated for roughness encoding. State of the art cross shape 3D MEMS sensors were integrated with polymeric packaging providing in total 16 sensitive elements to external mechanical stimuli in an area of about 20 mm(2), similarly to the SA1 innervation density in humans. Experimental analysis of the bio-inspired tactile sensor array wa...

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity Summary This thesis presents the design and performance of the Virtual Palpation Gripper, an early prototype of a remote palpation instrument intended for laparoscopic surgery. Psychophysical experiments related to this prototype are also described. In minimally invasive techniques, such as laparoscopic surgery, the interventions are performed with i...

Most tactile sensors are based on the assumption that touch depends on measuring pressure. However, the pressure distribution at the surface of a tactile sensor cannot be acquired directly and must be inferred from the deformation field induced by the touched object in the sensor medium. Currently, there is no consensus as to which components of strain are most informative for tactile sensing. ...

This paper presents an anthropomorphic robot hand called the Gifu hand II, which has a thumb and four fingers, all the joints of which are driven by servomotors built into the fingers and the palm. The thumb has four joints with four-degrees-of-freedom (DOF); the other fingers have four joints with 3-DOF; and two axes of the joints near the palm cross orthogonally at one point, as is the case i...

A full tactile sensing suite for the nger segments and palm of the Utah/MIT Dextrous Hand is presented. The rubber-based sensors employ capaci-tance sensing and oating electrodes in the top layer, and contain local electronics for excitation, ltering, analog-to-digital conversion, and serial communication. Experimental results on static, dynamic, and spatial properties are presented. Use of the...