CAREER: Making Tactile Waves: Somatosensation as Elastic Wave Propagation

职业：制造触觉波：体感作为弹性波传播

• 批准号: 1751348
• 负责人: Yon Visell
• 金额: $ 53.93万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Barbara
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-04-01 至 2023-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1751348&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Making; Tactile; Waves; Somatosensation

Our sense of touch is far less understood than vision or hearing, and remains an under-utilized modality in computing systems. This is partly due to our limited understanding of the physical processes that relate the mechanics of touching an object to perception and movement. Recent research has shown that even lightly touching an object with a finger often excites elastic waves that travel throughout the hand and elicit responses in the sensory nervous system that evoke the conscious experience of touch contact in the brain, but the biomechanics that mediate this process are as yet unclear. The goals of this project are to elucidate aspects of the sense of touch that are affected by mechanical waves propagating in the body, to investigate the range of tactile sensations that accompany natural interactions with the hands, and to design new hardware technologies and algorithms for providing touch feedback in virtual reality. The work will quantitatively explore mechanisms of touch elicited wave propagation in order to catalyze advances in technologies for haptic sensing and feedback. Project outcomes will have broad impact by establishing a unique approach to teaching concepts from engineering and neuroscience to students at all levels, by using the sense of touch as a focal point and arena for creative hands-on learning, by enabling science outreach to the public through a radio show hosted by the PI, and by contributing to new technologies for aiding individuals with complex sensory impairments affecting the sense of touch.This project unites theoretical and empirical studies of touch-related viscoelastic waves with the engineering of new technologies for haptic sensing and display. To elucidate the mechanisms of human touch sensing and to realize technologies that can accurately address the haptic sense, a quantitative account of the mechanical signals involved is needed. Building on recent findings about touch-related elastic wave propagation in the hand, the viscoelastic waves produced during touch interactions with objects and surfaces, and the information they carry, will be measured and analyzed in order to: (1) Reveal the mechanics and information content of contact-elicited waves; (2) Create sensing methods that will be used to characterize tactile information in real world environments; and (3) Design haptic display technologies and rendering techniques to provide evocative haptic effects to the hand. The research will address a major gap in our understanding of tactile function by clarifying the biomechanical processes that link remote touch contact to neural processing and conscious perception. It will also aid efforts to explain specializations in the peripheral nervous system, such as the distribution, properties, and function of populations of vibration sensitive tactile receptors. Furthermore, it will yield unique wearable technologies for capturing and reproducing tactile sensations in the whole hand.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

我们对触觉的理解远不如视觉或听觉，并且在计算系统中仍然是一种未充分利用的模态。 这部分是由于我们对物理过程的理解有限，这些物理过程将触摸物体的力学与感知和运动联系起来。 最近的研究表明，即使用手指轻轻触摸物体，也会激发弹性波，这些弹性波在整个手部传播，并引起感觉神经系统的反应，从而唤起大脑中有意识的触摸体验，但介导这一过程的生物力学尚不清楚。 该项目的目标是阐明触觉受身体中传播的机械波影响的方面，调查伴随与手的自然交互的触觉范围，并设计新的硬件技术和算法，以提供虚拟现实中的触摸反馈。 这项工作将定量探索触摸引起的波传播机制，以促进触觉传感和反馈技术的进步。 项目成果将产生广泛的影响，通过建立一种独特的方法，向各级学生教授工程和神经科学的概念，通过使用触觉作为创造性实践学习的焦点和竞技场，通过由PI主持的广播节目向公众推广科学，并通过促进新技术，帮助个人与复杂的感官障碍影响触觉。这个项目结合了理论和实证研究的触摸-相关的粘弹性波与工程的新技术的触觉传感和显示。 为了阐明人类触摸感测的机制并实现可以准确地解决触觉的技术，需要对所涉及的机械信号进行定量描述。 基于最近关于手中与触摸相关的弹性波传播的发现，将测量和分析在与物体和表面的触摸交互期间产生的粘弹性波以及它们携带的信息，以便：（1）揭示接触引起的波的力学和信息内容;（2）创建将用于表征真实的世界环境中的触觉信息的感测方法;（3）设计触觉显示技术和渲染技术，以向手提供唤起触觉效果。 这项研究将通过澄清将远程触摸接触与神经处理和有意识感知联系起来的生物力学过程来解决我们对触觉功能理解的一个主要空白。 它也将有助于解释周围神经系统的专业化，如振动敏感触觉感受器群体的分布，特性和功能。 此外，它还将产生独特的可穿戴技术，用于捕捉和再现整个手部的触觉。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Too hot, too fast! Using the thermal grill illusion to explore dynamic thermal perception

太热了，太快了！

• DOI: 10.1109/haptics.2018.8357167
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: 2018 IEEE Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS
• 作者: Patwardhan, Shriniwas;Kawazoe, Anzu;Kerr, David;Nakatani, Masashi;Visell, Yon
• 通讯作者: Visell, Yon

Proprioceptive Localization of the Fingers: Coarse, Biased, and Context-Sensitive

手指的本体感觉定位：粗略、有偏差和上下文敏感

• DOI: 10.1109/toh.2019.2899302
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: IEEE Transactions on Haptics
• 影响因子: 2.9
• 作者: Dandu, Bharat;Kuling, Irene A.;Visell, Yon
• 通讯作者: Visell, Yon