Famous Sad Love Quotes: Good vibrations: The glove that improves wearer's sense of touch by pulsating fingertip

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By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 4:57 PM on 5th August 2011

A little vibration can be a good thing for workers who need a sensitive touch to operate operate precision machinery.

Scientists have developed a glove with a special fingertip designed to improve the wearer's sense of touch.

Applying a small vibration to the side of the fingertip improves tactile sensitivity and motor performance, according to the study.

Increased sensitivity: Scientist Minoru Shinohara conducts a single-point touch test on Jun Ueda, who is wearing a glove with a vibrating fingertip designed to improve his sense of touch

Previous research has shown that adding an appropriate amount of white noise - a concept called stochastic resonance - can improve sight, hearing, balance control and touch.

But this marks the first time that white noise has been incorporated into a wearable device.

The prototype attaches to the fingertip to improve the sense of touch.

Researcher Jun Udea, at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said: 'This device may one day be used to assist individuals whose jobs require high-precision manual dexterity or those with medical conditions that reduce their sense of touch.'

Ueda worked with Georgia Tech's Minoru Shinohara and visiting scholar Yuichi Kurita to design the device and test its capabilities on a small group of healthy people.

The glove uses an actuator made of a stack of lead zirconate titanate layers to generate high-frequency vibration.

The ceramic layers are piezoelectric, which means they generate an electrical charge when a mechanical force is applied to them.

The actuator is attached to the side of the fingertip so that the palm-side of the finger remains free and the individual wearing the glove can continue to manipulate objects.

Researchers attached the device to ten healthy adult volunteers who performed common sensory and motor skill tasks, including texture discrimination, two-point discrimination, single-point touch and grasp tests.

For an agile (and warm) hand: Applying a small vibration to the side of the fingertip improves tactile sensitivity and motor performance

The experimental results showed that the volunteers performed statistically better on all of the tasks when mechanical vibration was applied.

Mr Ueda said: 'All of the experimental results showed that some mechanical vibration was better than none at all, but the level of vibration that statistically improved sensorimotor functions varied by test.'

For each test, researchers attached the device to a volunteer's non-dominant index finger and subjected the finger to six random vibrations that ranged from 0 to 150 per cent of that person's vibration amplitude threshold, a value that was determined by earlier testing.

The threshold value was the magnitude of vibration required for a subject to feel that the device was vibrating.

In the two-point discrimination test, two sharp points were pressed against the fingertip and volunteers reported whether they could reliably distinguish two points touching their finger versus just one.

The results showed that when individuals were subjected to vibrations equal to 75 and 100 per cent of their thresholds, they could sense two points that were closer together.

The single-point touch experiment involved pressing a fibre strand against each individual's finger. Subjects were asked to report if they could feel filaments of different weights touching their fingers.

The volunteers could feel lighter weight filaments when exposed to vibrations up to their vibration amplitude threshold.

In the third experiment, pieces of sandpaper with different grits were glued on one side of a plastic board.

Researchers then randomly selected a test piece of sandpaper and attached it to the other side of the board - which the subjects could not see.

Subjects touched the single piece of sandpaper and tried to select the matching piece from the nine samples on the other side of the board.

At vibration levels of 50 and 100 per cent of their thresholds, the subjects selected the correct piece of sandpaper 15 per cent more often than when they were not exposed to any vibration.

For the grasping test, each subject pinched and held an object for three seconds with as small a force as possible without letting it slip.

Statistically significant improvements in grasping were observed for cases of 50, 100 and 125 per cent of threshold vibration.

All four sensing ability tests confirmed that the application of certain levels of mechanical vibration enhanced the tactile sensitivity of the fingertip.

However, because the levels of vibration that created statistically significant results varied, the researchers are currently conducting experiments to determine the optimal amplitude and frequency characteristics of vibration and the influence of long-term exposure to vibrations.

They are also working on optimising the design of the glove and testing the effect of attaching actuators to both sides of the fingertip or the fingernail.

Mr Ueda said: 'The future of this research may lead to the development of a novel orthopaedic device that can help people with peripheral nerve damage resume their daily activities or improve the abilities of individuals with jobs that require skills in manipulation or texture discrimination.'