Multi Surface Electrodes Nerve Bundles Stimulation on the Wrist: Modified Location of Tactile Sensation on the Palm

Abstract

Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) of nerve bundles, such as ulnar and median nerves, is a technique used to evoke tactile sensation on the hand. Considering this technique does not require electrodes to be attached to the hand, it can induce sensation without interrupting the interaction between the hand and environment. Although this technology has most commonly been explored for restoring sensory feedback in amputees, it can also be applied to tactile devices for non-disabled individuals to solve problems that recent tactile interfaces have been facing such as interference of the device with the interaction between the hand and environment. We propose TENS at the wrist with multi-electrode targeting the cutaneous nerve bundles as a method to induce tactile sensation with higher spacial resolution, and without unintended tactile sensation at the upper arm. In this study, we demonstrated through psychophysical experiments and finite element simulation that our method induces sensation only at the hand, and that it could control the location of induced tactile sensation in the circumference direction.

Keywords

• Electrical tactile interface
• human–computer interaction
• transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation
• nerve bundle stimulation