Linkage between touch behavior and touch feeling

We actively move our hands when exploring the external world and acquiring information about an object’s attributes. For example, we push an object to discern its hardness and stroke an object to determine its roughness. However, the role of hand motion in tactile perception has been largely overlooked. In this study, we investigated whether tactile perception can be estimated by the analysis of hand and eye motions and found that these motions carry information about it. Our findings will provide insights into the mechanisms of tactile perception as well as into the design of manual haptic interfaces.

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