Electrotactile Feedback for the Discrimination of Different Surface Textures Using a Microphone

Electrotactile Feedback for the Discrimination of Different Surface Textures Using a Microphone

Blog Article

Most commercial prosthetic hands lack closed-loop feedback, thus, a lot of research has been focusing on implementing sensory feedback systems to provide the user with sources iphone 90m sensory information during activities of daily living.This study evaluates the possibilities of using a microphone and electrotactile feedback to identify different textures.A condenser microphone was used as a sensor to detect the friction sound generated from the contact between different textures and the microphone.

The generated signal was processed to provide a characteristic electrical stimulation presented to the participants.The main goal of the processing was to derive a continuous and intuitive transfer function between the microphone signal and stimulation frequency.Twelve able-bodied volunteers participated in the study, in which they were asked to identify the stroked texture (among four used in this study: Felt, sponge, silicone rubber, and string mesh) using only electrotactile feedback.

The experiments were done in three phases: (1) Training, (2) with-feedback, (3) without-feedback.Each texture was stroked 20 times each during all three phases.The results show that the participants were able to differentiate between different textures, with a median accuracy of 85%, by using only electrotactile feedback with the stimulation 15-eg1053cl frequency being the only variable parameter.