September 6, 2013 Journal article Open Access

dynamic investigation test rig on haptics dita

F Cannella; L Scalise; E Olivieri; M Memeo; D G Caldwell

Research on tactile sensitivity has been conducted since the last century and many devices have been proposed to study in detail this sense through experimental tests. The sense of touch is essential in every-day life of human beings, but it can also play a fundamental role for the assessment of some neurological disabilities and pathologies. In fact, the level of tactile perception can provide information on the health state of the nervous system. In this paper, authors propose the design and development of a novel test apparatus, named DITA (Dynamic Investigation Test-rig on hAptics), aiming to provide the measurement of the tactile sensitivity trough the determination of the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) curve of a subject. The paper reports the solution adopted for the system design and the results obtained on the set of experiments carried out on volunteers.