Alternative Display of Friction Represented by Tactile Stimulation without Tangential Force

A new display method of friction sensation based on tactile stimulation is proposed. In this method, no tangential force on the fingertip is required to represent friction sensation. We focus on the activities of tactile receptors in response to stick-slip contact phenomena with the fingertip. The proposed method controls the activities of FA II type receptors using very high frequency vibrations (at 600 Hz) in corresponding to the phase of stick-slip transition. The stick-slip transition was expressed by a single DOF model with Coulomb’s friction, which represents the effects of coefficients of dynamic/static friction and hand movements. The sensory magnitudes of the perceived friction by the proposed method were evaluated in contrast with a force display. The experimental results showed that the perceived friction proposed had high correlation with that of the force display in regard to the increase tendency toward static friction coefficients. The sensory magnitudes of the tactile perceived friction were about one-seventh smaller than that of the force display.