Contact Force during Active Roughness Perception

Abstract

In active touch, tactile perception is bidirectionally related to the exploratory movements. This means that exploration influences perception, but also perception influences exploration. We can optimize or change the exploratory movements according to the perception and/or the task, consciously or unconsciously. In this paper, a psychophysical experiment on roughness perception is presented. Exerted normal force in different perceptual tasks (discrimination task and scaling task) using rough and smooth stimuli are collected. The results show that humans use a greater variation in contact force for the smooth stimuli than for the rough stimuli.