Response Time to a Vibrotactile Stimulus Presented on the Foot at Rest and During Walking on Different Surfaces

Module for Monitoring the Probe-Skin Contact Force in the Study of Vibration Perception on the Wrist

This paper presents a module for monitoring the contact force between a probe for measuring vibration perception on the wrist and the skin. The module was designed for an original measuring stand for the automatic testing of the vibrotactile discrimination thresholds using the psychophysical adaptive method of 1 up-2 down with two or three interval forced choices (2IFC, 3IFC). Measurement methods were implemented in LabVIEW software. The inspiration for the project was the need to check the possibility of building a vibrating interface for transmitting information through vibrations delivered to the wrist via a bracelet. The test procedure on the wrist is not standardized; however, during its development, the recommendations of the Polish Norm-International Organization for Standardization PN-ISO 13091-1, 2006 were adopted. This standard contains methods for measuring vibration sensation thresholds on the fingertips for the assessment of neural dysfunction. The key to the repeatability of measurements seems to be the ability to continuously control the pressure of the measuring probe on the skin. This article compares two solutions for measuring the contact force along with an analysis of their accuracy and the impact of vibrations on the measured values. Moreover, the results of measurements of vibrotactile amplitude and frequency discrimination thresholds obtained on the ventral wrist at five frequencies (25, 32, 63, 125 and 250 Hz) are presented.

Perception of a Haptic Stimulus Presented Under the Foot Under Workload

It is clear that the haptic channel can be exploited as a communication medium for several tasks of everyday life. Here we investigated whether such communication can be altered in a cognitive load situation. We studied the perception of a vibrotactile stimulus presented under the foot when the attention is loaded by another task (cognitive load). The results demonstrated a significant influence of workload on the perception of the vibrotactile stimulus. Overall, we observed that the average score in the single-task (at rest) condition was greater than the overall mean score in the dual-task conditions (counting forwards, counting backwards, and walking). The walking task was the task that most influenced the perception of the vibrotactile stimulus presented under the foot.