Investigation on the role of the finger Transfer Function in tactile rendering by Friction-Induced-Vibrations

The world of haptics, tactile rendering of textures and tactile interfaces has witnessed significant expansion in the last years. When dealing with the design of tactile devices, the interaction between the device and the user's finger becomes crucial. With a focus on optimizing vibrotactile devices for texture rendering, a parametric analysis of the dynamic transfer function of the human finger was conducted under different test conditions. Discrimination campaigns have been conducted, exploiting an average transfer function among participants, to simulate surface textures by Friction-Induced Vibrations. The excellent results of the discrimination campaigns evidenced the effectiveness of the approach, allowing to get rid of the need to characterize the specific finger Transfer Function for each user of the vibrotactile device.