Artificial SA-I and RA-I afferents for tactile sensing of ridges and gratings

Pestell, Nicholas, Griffith, Thom and Lepora, Nathan F. 2022. Artificial SA-I and RA-I afferents for tactile sensing of ridges and gratings. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 19 (189) , 20210822. 10.1098/rsif.2021.0822

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Abstract

For robot touch to reach the capabilities of human touch, artificial tactile sensors may require transduction principles like those of natural tactile afferents. Here we propose that a biomimetic tactile sensor (the TacTip) could provide suitable artificial analogues of the tactile skin dynamics, afferent responses and population encoding. Our three-dimensionally printed sensor skin is based on the physiology of the dermal–epidermal interface with an underlying mesh of biomimetic intermediate ridges and dermal papillae, comprising inner pins tipped with markers. Slowly adapting SA-I activity is modelled by marker displacements and rapidly adapting RA-I activity by marker speeds. We test the biological plausibility of these artificial population codes with three classic experiments used for natural touch: (1a) responses to normal pressure to test adaptation of single afferents and spatial modulation across the population; (1b) responses to bars, edges and gratings to compare with measurements from monkey primary afferents; and (2) discrimination of grating orientation to compare with human perceptual performance. Our results show a match between artificial and natural touch at single afferent, population and perceptual levels. As expected, natural skin is more sensitive, which raises a challenge to fabricate a biomimetic fingertip that demonstrates human sensitivity using the transduction principles of human touch.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Publisher:	The Royal Society
ISSN:	1742-5662
Date of Acceptance:	20 January 2022
Last Modified:	02 Sep 2025 09:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/180767

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