Abstract
Tactile information processing was studied based on psychophysical experiments in order to design tactile displays and sensors for tele-existence robots or virtual reality devices. The identification characteristics of the tactile sense concerned with the quality of materials were investigated when human fingertips touched the surface of various materials. In addition to obtaining the tactile characteristics, the temperature change of the skin surface of a fingertip was measured when the fingertip contacted the surface of materials. From these experimental results, the temperature difference from the normal skin temperature was found to be very important to recognize what kind of materials contacted the skin surface. Moreover, it was found that the identification characteristics concerning the quality of materials were different between passive touch and active touch.
