Tactile sense is one of the most important sensory channels for us to perceive the surrounding environment as well as visual and auditory senses; however, tactile sense is not fully understood/used at present. According to the physiological understandings, tactile sense is perceived through mechanoreceptors located just under our glabrous skin. There are four types of mechanoreceptors sharing the frequency range against vibration stimuli. This paper introduces a tactile sensor and a tactile display operated based on the physiological knowledge. The tactile sensor acquires vibration data using a piezoelectric element when tracing on a sample with a tracer. Then the data is conducted with fast Fourier transform to compare with the characteristics of mechanoreceptors. As a result of this comparison, we can estimate the response of each mechanoreceptor which may help us quantify the tactile sensation of the sample. On the other hand, the tactile display mainly consists of a disk-shaped ultrasonic vibrator. The resonance frequency of vibrator is 24 kHz, which is not discriminable by the mechanoreceptors, however, by using the amplitude modulation technique, it can display a tactile sensation. Since the configuration of vibrator is simple, the tactile display is a promising candidate for future tactile applications.
