Haptic Perceptual Instruments

一个人在没有视觉的情况下，可以通过挥动和摇晃物体来了解物体的某些特性。同样地，他或她可以通过手持工具敲击看不见的表面来了解它们的某些特性。这些通过身体感知周围环境的例子，被称为触觉感知，是基于机械力，以复杂的方式扭曲身体组织。据推测，对于每个感知到的环境属性，都有一个特定的机械属性。识别这些机械特性，并准确理解人们如何使用它们来测量邻近环境的空间特征，构成了重大挑战。这些实验将研究人们如何使用惯性张量作为触觉感知的机械基础，来感知用手挥动的看不见的物体的长度、形状和方向，他们将研究人们如何使用反作用力的结果作为触觉感知的机械基础，来感知被击打表面之间的距离。这项研究还将检查挥舞的模式，寻找物体被挥舞的特定方式与人们试图测量的物体属性之间的关系。实验参与者将通过调整可见的、可移动的表面来量化感知到的特性。研究结果可以为感觉和运动假肢、机械肢体和“智能”遥感仪器的设计提供有价值的见解。

A person, without benefit of seeing, can come to know about certain properties of objects by wielding and shaking them. Similarly, he or she can come to know about certain properties of unseen surfaces by striking them with a hand-held implement. These instances of knowing about the surrounding environment through the use of the body, known as haptic perception, are based on mechanical forces that distort the body's tissues in complex ways. Presumably, for each perceived environmental property, there is a specific mechanical property. Identifying these mechanical properties, and understanding exactly how people use them to measure spatial characteristics of the adjacent environment, pose significant challenges. These experiments will examine how people use the inertia tensor as the mechanical basis for the haptic perception of the lengths, shapes, and orientations of unseen objects wielded by hand, and they will examine how people use the resultant of reactive forces as the mechanical basis for the haptic perception of the distance between struck surfaces. This research will also examine patterns of wielding, looking for a relation between the particular way an object is wielded and the object property the person is attempting to measure. The participants in the experiments will respond by adjusting visible, moveable surfaces to quantify the perceived properties. Results could provide insights valuable in the design of sensory and motor prostheses, robotic limbs, and "smart" remote-sensing instruments.