A communication system with a mobile robot by presenting tactile apparent movement sensation

Users are able to experience a high immersive feeling easily in a virtual environment with the widespread availability of human-machine interface devices such as head-mounted displays and less expensive human motion sensors. The introduction of such electronic devices has led to more research being conducted in the area of the interaction of a human with robots and machine systems in virtual reality environment and a augmented reality space. Human-machine interface (HMI) researchers are looking for new ways to deal various information, and a variety of studies that present tactile experiences to users are being introduced by employing tactile actuators and devices. Tactile higher-level perception such as the phantom sensations and the apparent movement is known as tactile illusions, by which a user feels virtual sensation as being stimulated at different points on skin at the same time, and could be also effectively used for presenting better tactile sensations. In this study, we focus on the tactile perception of the apparent movement in a human body, and develop a system, by which a user has special tactile experience in an environment with a mobile robot to know its situation such as the moving speed and the roughness of the located ground and the wall as a feedback from the robot.