Necessary Spatial Resolution for Realistic Tactile Feeling Display

In this paper, we show a hypothesis on the sensing mechanism in the human tactile organ and its resolution. The hypothesis is that human skin cannot resolve any finer pattern than the resolution suggested by the two-point-discrimination test, but that variety created by four kinds of signals from four kinds of mechano-receptors makes it possible to detect fine feature of texture. This means if we control stimulus to four kinds of mechanoreceptors individually, the realistic contact-feeling display will not need higher spatial resolution than suggested by the two-point discrimination threshold. We examine this hypothesis through psychophysical experiments