Characterization of an air jet haptic lump display

During manual palpation, clinicians rely on distributed tactile information to identify and localize hard lumps embedded in soft tissue. The development of tactile feedback systems to enhance palpation using robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) systems is challenging due to size and weight constraints, motivating a pneumatic actuation strategy. Recently, an air jet approach has been proposed for generating a lump percept. We use this technique to direct a thin stream of air through an aperture directly on the finger pad, which indents the skin in a hemispherical manner, producing a compelling lump percept. We hypothesize that the perceived parameters of the lump (e.g. size and stiffness) can be controlled by jointly adjusting air pressure and the aperture size through which air escapes. In this work, we investigate how these control variables interact to affect perceived pressure on the finger pad. First, we used a capacitive tactile sensor array to measure the effect of aperture size on output pressure, and found that peak output pressure increases with aperture size. Second, we performed a psychophysical experiment for each aperture size to determine the just noticeable difference (JND) of air pressure on the finger pad. Subject-averaged pressure JND values ranged from 19.4-24.7 kPa, with no statistical differences observed between aperture sizes. The aperture-pressure relationship and the pressure JND values will be fundamental for future display control. © 2011 IEEE