Studying One and Two-Finger Perception of Tactile Directional Cues

摘要

In this paper, we study the perception of tactile directional cues by one or two fingers, using either the index, middle, or ring finger, or any of their combination. Therefore, we use tactile devices able to stretch the skin of the fingertips in 2 DOF along four directions: horizontal, vertical, and the two diagonals. We measure the recognition rate in each direction, as well as the subjective preference, depending on the (couple of) finger(s) stimulated. Our results show first that using the index and/or middle finger performs significantly better than using the ring finger on both qualitative and quantitative measures. The results when comparing one versus two-finger configurations are more contrasted. The recognition rate of the diagonals is higher when using one finger than two, whereas two fingers enable a better perception of the horizontal direction. These results pave the way to other studies on one versus two-finger perception, and raise methodological considerations for the design of multi-finger tactile devices.