Stick/slip Distribution on the Fingerpad and Response of Tactile Receptors when Human Grasp an Object

Grip force and contact condition including stick/slip are measured to investigate the mechanism of dynamical transmission of contact information to tactile afferents in precision grip of human. A system for measuring normal/tangential forces and stick/slip condition between the human finger and grasping object is made. As a result of measurement, it is found that the increase ratio of the grip force and the change in stick area are mutually related. Contact condition is also calculated using a FE (finite element) analysis. It is found that the stick/slip condition shows the similar phenomena as experiment. Change in SED (strain energy density) at the Meissner’s corpuscles’ location shows local maximum at the slip area. The relationship among the SED at the location of Meissner’s corpuscles, the deformation of the finger and the stick/slip condition in precision grip is shown. In other word, a model for transmitting the dynamic information from the contact condition to tactile afferent responses during precision girp is constructed.