Electrotactile Feedback for the Discrimination of Different Surface Textures Using a Microphone

Electrotactile Feedback for the Discrimination of Different Surface Textures Using a Microphone

Blog Article

Most commercial prosthetic hands lack closed-loop feedback, thus, a lot of research has been focusing on implementing sensory feedback systems to provide the user with sensory information during ngetikin.com activities of daily living.This study evaluates the possibilities of using a microphone and electrotactile feedback to identify different textures.A condenser microphone was used as a sensor to detect the friction sound generated from the contact between different textures and the microphone.The generated signal was processed to provide a characteristic electrical stimulation presented to the participants.

The main goal of the processing was to derive a continuous and intuitive transfer function between the microphone signal and stimulation frequency.Twelve able-bodied volunteers participated in the study, in which they were asked to identify the stroked texture (among four used in this study: Felt, sponge, silicone rubber, and string click here mesh) using only electrotactile feedback.The experiments were done in three phases: (1) Training, (2) with-feedback, (3) without-feedback.Each texture was stroked 20 times each during all three phases.

The results show that the participants were able to differentiate between different textures, with a median accuracy of 85%, by using only electrotactile feedback with the stimulation frequency being the only variable parameter.