Skin Stretch This project began as an NSF SGER on Optimizing skin stretch for localized haptic display. Subsequent work has focused on developing wearable rotational skin stretch devices and characterizing their performance for haptic display of users' motions. Topics on this homepage: Project Overview Activities Findings Broader impacts Literature Links Additional navigation links can be found in the left menu bar. This project was initiated under NSF SGER Award 0554188 and continues under funding from the portable haptics project.

Project Overview

In this project, we are investigating light-weight, low-power devices that augment vibration with stimulation of superficial slow-acting (SAII) mechanoreceptors. For unencumbering wireless displays, skin stretch is especially appealing as it does not require much power; motions and velocities can be low. It has been shown in previous research that mechanoreceptors respond quickly and accurately to skin strain changes and that humans are more sensitive to tangential forces than normal forces on the hairy skin of the forearms. However, in comparison to other haptic displays, devices that focus on skin stretch have received relatively little attention.

Our research will extend the previous work on skin stretch studying how skin-stretch stimulators can be used to enhance a user’s experience in a virtual environment and enhance person-to-person communication and information transfer.

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Activities

• SkinStretchProperties
• PerceptionTesting
• ReactionTimeTesting
• ArmTwister
• ArmTwister2
• PortableSkinStretchSetup
• PortableSkinStretchDesign
• MotionDisplayKAUST
• TorsionalEndEffectors

Findings

TrackPointSensor

Broader impacts

• MotionTraining

Literature Links

• Presentation1.ppt: for the Nov 24 Teleconference with Tampere

• Rotational Skin Stretch: Karlin's dissertation

• DefensePPT.ppt: Karlin's defense slides