Tribologists on the Path of Tactile Perception

Abstract

Between human senses, tactile perception is nowadays object of several research area, due to the lack of knowledge and to its crucial role on several social and industrial issues. Being the contact between skin and touched surfaces at the origin of the tactile sense, tribologists play a key role in the identification and understanding of the signals at the origin of touch. In particular, the quasi-static deformation of the fingertip skin, due to distributed contact forces, together with its transient deformation, due to the vibrations induced by the sliding of the fingerprints on the surface, activate the mechanoreceptors, who collect information to the brain. In this work, the main contributions dealing with the role of friction-induced vibrations and skin-surface contact on tactile perception are discussed.