Tactile Glove Uses Small Vibrations to Improve the Wearer's Sense of Touch

Thursday, August 4, 2011 - 13:30 in Physics & Chemistry

Georgia Tech's Tactile Glove Georgia Tech associate professor Minoru Shinohara and mechanical engineering assistant professor Jun Ueda testing their sense-heightening glove. Georgia Tech/Gary Meek Researchers at Georgia Tech have found that a little vibration goes a long way toward upping a person's sense of touch. Using a glove of their own design, they've found that they can heighten tactile sensitivity by applying a small, high-frequency vibration to the side of the fingertip. The glove is based on the notion of stochastic resonance--the adding of a little white noise to a sensory experience which has shown in previous tests to actually heighten the sense being challenged. But while this has been previously demonstrated in sight, hearing, touch, balance, etc., no one has ever built a wearable device that takes advantage of the stochastic resonance sensory advantage. The glove contains an actuator made of lead zirconate layers stacked one upon the other to generate the...

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