Relationship between Press Force and Sensory Characteristics of Temperature in Forefinger

- Basic Research based on Contact Area -

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing research on the development of interface devices based on the tactile sense. However, although some studies have investigated the characteristics of temperature sense, there has been little research on the development of interface devices based on the temperature sense. Therefore, in this study, we focused on the temperature sense and examined the relationship between the sensory characteristics of temperature and press force in order to investigate these characteristics during active touch. Specifically, we experimented to evaluate the effect of the press force on the sensory characteristics of temperature by using pair comparison method. Additionally, we measured the contact area of forefinger for verifying its effect on sensory characteristics of temperature. The results showed that the scale value of temperature sense increases with the press force, implying that the warmer (cooler) the human perception of the temperature, the higher the press force. If the temperature of objects is similar to skin temperature, the effect of the press force on the sensory characteristics of temperature is small. Moreover, it was found that there is the possibility that contact area of forefinger affect the characteristics of temperature sense.