Construction and psychophysical evaluation of a novel tactile shear force display

This paper presents the prototype of a shear force display for the finger tip and a first psychophysical evaluation. In order to explore whether the stimuli produced by the display are appropriate for human perception we studied discrimination performance of humans for distinguishing between different directions of pin movement. In a second step we explored the perceptual integration of multi-pin movements. This basic psychophysical knowledge that so far did not exist because the technology was not yet available will in return be used to improve the design of the display.