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• Oddo, C
• Beccai, L
• Wessberg, J
• Wasling, H
• Mattioli, F
• Carrozza, M
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• Oddo, C
• Beccai, L
• Wessberg, J
• Wasling, H
• Mattioli, F
• Carrozza, M
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• Oddo, C
• Beccai, L
• Wessberg, J
• Wasling, H
• Mattioli, F
• Carrozza, M

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Sensors 2011, 11(6), 5596-5615; doi:10.3390/s110605596

Article

Roughness Encoding in Human and Biomimetic Artificial Touch: Spatiotemporal Frequency Modulation and Structural Anisotropy of Fingerprints

Calogero Maria Oddo ^1,* , Lucia Beccai ² , Johan Wessberg ³ , Helena Backlund Wasling ³ , Fabio Mattioli ²  and Maria Chiara Carrozza ¹

¹ The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Polo Sant’Anna Valdera, Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, 56025 Pontedera, PI, Italy ² Center for Micro-BioRobotics@SSSA, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, 56025 Pontedera, PI, Italy ³ Department of Physiology, University of Gothenburg, Medicinaregatan 11, SE-40530 Goteborg, Sweden

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 24 March 2011; in revised form: 28 April 2011 / Accepted: 16 May 2011 / Published: 26 May 2011

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioinspired Sensor Systems)

Download PDF Full-Text [3755 KB, uploaded 26 May 2011 16:01 CEST]

Abstract: The influence of fingerprints and their curvature in tactile sensing performance is investigated by comparative analysis of different design parameters in a biomimetic artificial fingertip, having straight or curved fingerprints. The strength in the encoding of the principal spatial period of ridged tactile stimuli (gratings) is evaluated by indenting and sliding the surfaces at controlled normal contact force and tangential sliding velocity, as a function of fingertip rotation along the indentation axis. Curved fingerprints guaranteed higher directional isotropy than straight fingerprints in the encoding of the principal frequency resulting from the ratio between the sliding velocity and the spatial periodicity of the grating. In parallel, human microneurography experiments were performed and a selection of results is included in this work in order to support the significance of the biorobotic study with the artificial tactile system.

Keywords: MEMS tactile sensor array; fingerprints; biomimetic fingertip; roughness encoding; artificial touch; mechanoreceptors; microneurography; human touch; biorobotics

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