Observation of Finger Skin Movement on Periodical Bumps

Most tactile presentation methods for the touch panel present a uniform temporal signal to each finger, which hinders the expression of spatially distributed tactile information, such as information of thin lines and small bumps. To clarify the limitation of uniform presentation from the viewpoint of skin deformation, we observed the distribution of skin deformation while a finger comes into contact with periodical bumps. The measured skin deformation revealed that for bumps having an interval of less than 2 mm, the skin moved globally, which is in agreement with psychophysical and neurological knowledge.