Recent Advances in Tactile Sensor : Measurement and Valuation of Touch Sensation Using Tactile Sensor

Abstract

Touch is the most frequency used action to gather the outside information. In our daily life, various kinds of things are touched with fingers and their features are extracted and evaluated unconsciously. Tactile sensation gives not only perception of contact but also various kinds of feelings, like "rough", "soft", "warm", "comfortable", and so on. Thus, the sense of touch is indispensable to our life as well as the sense of sight. In the tactile function, contact, stroke, and other actions are used to an object for the tactile perception. It seems that most of the tactile sensors developed so far have been functional to the measurement of just force magnitude, while a few sensors are available for the rating of the feelings on an object material. This paper introduces an active palpation sensor for detecting the prostatic cancer and hypertrophy and a sensor for monitoring human hair conditions.