Clarification of Force Feeling Mechanism based on both Telecommunication and Haptic Illusion

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The purpose of this research is to clarify force-feeling mechanism of a human being by using a Virtual Reality technology based on Haptic Interface, which is a force display device. At first, Haptic Interface system was developed using a robot finger system. Its advantages are easiness both to change experimental conditions by changing mathematical models in the virtual reality environment and to obtain subject's motion data during the experiment.By making the most use of these advantages, Haptic Illusion field was selected to clarify the force-feeling mechanism. Experimental conditions of this field are very difficult to change in actual physical field. At first, to confirm effectiveness of the system for the Haptic illusion, a Horizontal-Vertical illusion experiment was selected, whose results show its effectiveness. Next, Size-Weight illusion was studied, whose results show that subject finger motion is mainly related to the Size-Weight illusion for passive action when a weight of a object is suddenly added to the operator finger. Another advantage of this system is to realize experimental condition that is never experienced in natural environment. As to this advantage, sudden small weight change phenomenon of an object was selected to clarify the force-feeling mechanism. Theses experiments show the following results. Perceptive thresholds are different for adding and reducing load process. Human beings can perceive a weight change with the magnitude of its rate. When a subject cannot perceive its change under the threshold, he may unconsciously adjust his muscle command to the weight change.Force telecommunication was studied as an application of the force-feeling mechanism. The force telecommunication system was constructed by using a concept of robotic master-slave system, whose fundamental studies show that mirror image occurs in operational spaces and not only force information but also position information are necessary to realize the force-feeling.