Search

The presentation of a moving tactile stimulus to a person's forearm evokes a pleasant sensation. The speed, intensity, and contact area of the strokes should be systematically changed to evaluate the relationship between pleasantness and tactile stimuli in more detail. Studies have examined the relationship between stroking stimulation and pleasant sensations using airborne ultrasound tactile displays. The ultrasound-based method has the advantage of reproducible control of the speed, intensity, and contact area of the stimulus. In this study, we prepared new stimuli focusing on the modulation methods and the contact area and aimed to clarify their relationship with pleasantness in more detail. Evaluating subjective sensations, such as pleasantness, numerically and consistently is challenging, warranting evaluation based on comparison. We propose a stimulus evaluation method that combines rough evaluation using Likert scales, detailed evaluation using pairwise comparisons, and quantification of comparison data using the Bradley--Terry model. As a result, we confirmed that the stimulus using lateral modulation and that with a large contact area used in this study were more pleasant than the conventional stimulus for six out of ten participants., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

Guiding human movements using tactile information is one of the promising applications of haptics. Using midair ultrasonic haptic stimulation, it is possible to guide a hand without visual information.However, the information of movement shown by conventional methods was partial. It has not been shown a method to guide a hand to an arbitrary point in three dimensional space. In this study, we propose a method of guiding the hand to the top of a virtual cone presented haptically and evaluate the effectiveness of the method through experiments. As a result, the method guided the participant's hand to the goal in a 30 cm cube workspace with an error of 64.34 mm

A noncontact tactile stimulus can be presented by focusing airborne ultrasound on the human skin. Focused ultrasound has recently been reported to produce not only vibration but also static pressure sensation on the palm by modulating the sound pressure distribution at a low frequency. This finding expands the potential for tactile rendering in ultrasound haptics as static pressure sensation is perceived with a high spatial resolution. In this study, we verified that focused ultrasound can render a static pressure sensation associated with contact with a small convex surface on a finger pad. This static contact rendering enables noncontact tactile reproduction of a fine uneven surface using ultrasound. In the experiments, four ultrasound foci were simultaneously and circularly rotated on a finger pad at 5 Hz. When the orbit radius was 3 mm, vibration and focal movements were barely perceptible, and the stimulus was perceived as static pressure. Moreover, under the condition, the pressure sensation rendered a contact with a small convex surface with a radius of 2 mm. The perceived intensity of the static contact sensation was equivalent to a physical contact force of 0.24 N on average, which was 12 times the radiation force physically applied to the skin.

Thermoacoustics, the interaction between heat and acoustic waves, is used in a wide range of advanced technological applications. Conversion of ultrasound waves into heat is employed in medical applications, including tumor ablation. However, thermal responses to airborne ultrasounds have not been extensively studied. Herein, we show that thermal responses to high-intensity airborne ultrasounds above 1000 Pa can be used for acoustic measurements. Thermal images on a mesh screen enabled the real-time visualization of three-dimensional acoustic fields. Based on the temperature distribution on a surface that reflects ultrasound waves, it was possible to determine the ultrasound focus position with a resolution much finer than the wavelength. Our results demonstrate that thermography observations based on ultrasound-temperature conversion can be used to visualize acoustic fields, which are conventionally difficult to observe. Our findings will advance technologies that use strong airborne ultrasound, such as mid-air haptics and acoustic levitation, and provide new scientific and technical tools for detecting surface properties and composition, including cells and fragile materials., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures