Development of a Sensor System for Measuring Tactile Sensation

This paper presents the development of a sensor system for measuring tactile sensation. First, various tactile feelings of fabrics are collected through questionnaires and the factor analysis is introduced to classify the feelings. Next, an active sensing system using the piezoelectric effect and the pyroelectric effect of a PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) film is assembled. The sensor's surface is heated and two kinds of active sensing, contact and slide, are introduced to collect tactile information. Measurement is done on the sample fabrics and features of the collected data are extracted as the sensor outputs. Comparison with tactile feelings shows that the sensor system well describes human tactile perception.