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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Fingertip friction and tactile rating of wrapping papers
    (Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer, 2022) Jost, Kim Michèle; Drewing, Knut; Bennewitz, Roland; Seifi, Hasti; Kappers, Astrid M. L.; Schneider, Oliver; Drewing, Knut; Pacchierotti, Claudio; Abbasimoshaei, Alireza; Huisman, Gijs; Kern, Thorsten A.
    The tactile exploration and perception of wrapping papers is investigated in terms of fingertip friction and rating of sensory, affective, and evaluative adjectives. Friction coefficients, which vary significantly between samples, are correlated with factors such as valence which are identified in a principal component analysis of subjective ratings. We found that affective appraisals of valence and arousal as well as evaluations of novelty, but not of value, decreased with increasing friction.
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    Light-Emitting Devices – Luminescence from Low-Dimensional Nanostructures
    (London : IntechOpen, 2014) Mousavi, S.H.; Jafari Mohammdi, S.A.; Haratizadeh, H.; Oliveira, Peter W. de
    [no abstract available]
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    Like a Second Skin: Understanding How Epidermal Devices Affect Human Tactile Perception
    (New York,NY,United States : Association for Computing Machinery, 2019) Nittala, Aditya Shekhar; Kruttwig, Klaus; Lee, Jaeyeon; Bennewitz, Roland; Arzt, Eduard; Steimle, Jürgen; Brewster, Stephen
    The emerging class of epidermal devices opens up new opportunities for skin-based sensing, computing, and interaction. Future design of these devices requires an understanding of how skin-worn devices affect the natural tactile perception. In this study, we approach this research challenge by proposing a novel classification system for epidermal devices based on flexural rigidity and by testing advanced adhesive materials, including tattoo paper and thin films of poly (dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS). We report on the results of three psychophysical experiments that investigated the effect of epidermal devices of different rigidity on passive and active tactile perception. We analyzed human tactile sensitivity thresholds, two-point discrimination thresholds, and roughness discrimination abilities on three different body locations (fingertip, hand, forearm). Generally, a correlation was found between device rigidity and tactile sensitivity thresholds as well as roughness discrimination ability. Surprisingly, thin epidermal devices based on PDMS with a hundred times the rigidity of commonly used tattoo paper resulted in comparable levels of tactile acuity. The material offers the benefit of increased robustness against wear and the option to re-use the device. Based on our findings, we derive design recommendations for epidermal devices that combine tactile perception with device robustness.
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    PhysioSkin: Rapid Fabrication of Skin-Conformal Physiological Interfaces
    (New York,NY,United States : Association for Computing Machinery, 2020) Nittala, Aditya Shekhar; Khan, Arshad; Kruttwig, Klaus; Kraus, Tobias; Steimle, Jürgen; Bernhaupt, Regina
    Advances in rapid prototyping platforms have made physiological sensing accessible to a wide audience. However, off-the-shelf electrodes commonly used for capturing biosignals are typically thick, non-conformal and do not support customization. We present PhysioSkin, a rapid, do-it-yourself prototyping method for fabricating custom multi-modal physiological sensors, using commercial materials and a commodity desktop inkjet printer. It realizes ultrathin skin-conformal patches (~1μm) and interactive textiles that capture sEMG, EDA and ECG signals. It further supports fabricating devices with custom levels of thickness and stretchability. We present detailed fabrication explorations on multiple substrate materials, functional inks and skin adhesive materials. Informed from the literature, we also provide design recommendations for each of the modalities. Evaluation results show that the sensor patches achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio. Example applications demonstrate the functionality and versatility of our approach for prototyping a next generation of physiological devices that intimately couple with the human body.
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    Perception of Friction in Tactile Exploration of Micro-structured Rubber Samples
    (Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer, 2022) Fehlberg, Maja; Kim, Kwang-Seop; Drewing, Knut; Hensel, René; Bennewitz, Roland; Seifi, Hasti; Kappers, Astrid M. L.; Schneider, Oliver; Drewing, Knut; Pacchierotti, Claudio; Abbasimoshaei, Alireza; Huisman, Gijs; Kern, Thorsten A.
    Fingertip friction and the related shear of skin are key mechanical mechanisms in tactile perception, but the perception of friction itself is rarely explored except for the flat surfaces of tactile displays. We investigated the perception of friction for tactile exploration of a unique set of samples whose fabric-like surfaces are equipped with regular arrays of flexible micropillars. The measured fingertip friction increases with decreasing bending stiffness, where the latter is controlled by radius (20–75 µm) and aspect ratio of the micropillars. In forced-choice tasks, participants noticed relative differences in friction as small as 0.2, and even smaller when a sample with less than 100 µm distance between pillars is omitted from the analysis. In an affective ranking of samples upon active touch, the perception of pleasantness is anticorrelated with the measured friction. Our results offer insights towards a rational design of materials with well-controlled surface microstructure which elicit a dedicated tactile appeal.
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    Advancing environmental intelligence through novel approaches in soft bioinspired robotics and allied technologies: I-Seed project position paper for Environmental Intelligence in Europe
    (New York,NY,United States : Association for Computing Machinery, 2022) Mazzolai, Barbara; Kraus, Tobias; Pirrone, Nicola; Kooistra, Lammert; De Simone, Antonio; Cottin, Antoine; Margheri, Laura
    The EU-funded FET Proactive Environmental Intelligence project "I-Seed"(Grant Agreement n. 101017940, https://www.iseedproject.eu/) targets towards the development of a radically simplified and environmentally friendly approach for environmental monitoring. Specifically, I-Seed aims at developing a new generation of self-deployable and biodegradable soft miniaturized robots, inspired by the morphology and dispersion abilities of plant seeds, able to perform low-cost, environmentally responsible, in-situ measurements. The natural functional mechanisms of seeds dispersal offer a rich source of robust, highly adaptive, mass and energy efficient mechanisms, and behavioral and morphological intelligence, which can be selected and implemented for advanced, but simple, technological inventions. I-Seed robots are conceived as unique in their movement abilities because inspired by passive mechanisms and materials of natural seeds, and unique in their environmentally friendly design because made of all biodegradable components. Sensing is based on a chemical transduction mechanism in a stimulus-responsive sensor material with fluorescence-based optical readout, which can be read via one or more drones equipped with fluorescent LiDAR technology and a software able to perform a real time georeferencing of data. The I-Seed robotic ecosystem is envisioned to be used for collecting environmental data in-situ with high spatial and temporal resolution across large remote areas where no monitoring data are available, and thus for extending current environmental sensor frameworks and data analysis systems.