• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.34-42
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• 2009

Rodents, specially rats, can recognize distance and shape of an object and also pattern of the textures by using their whiskers. Mechanoreceptors surrounding the root of whisker in their follicle measure deflection of the whisker. Rats can move their whisker back and forth freely. This ability, called active whisking or active sensing, is one of characteristics of rat behaviours. Many researches based on the mechanism have been progressed. In this paper, we test a simple and accurate method based on deflection of the whisker: we designed biomimetic whiskers modeling after a structure of follicle using the microphone. The microphone sensor measures a mechanical vibration. Attaching an artificial whisker beam to the microphone membrane, we can detect a vibration of whisker and this can show the deflection amount of whisker indirectly.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.1306-1309
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• 1997

Fabric hand feeling is an important property used in apparel industry. This paper shows a sensing method to output a fiber whisker's stick slip vibration by scanning it on the fabric. Then the vibration waveforms are transformed to the Symmetrized Dot Pattern images. Experimental results show that SDP images of fiber whisker's stik slip is potentially useful to the detection of fabric hand feeling values.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.55-60
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• 2010

Rodents can recognize objects by using their whiskers. Not only rodents but also mammals use their whiskers to recognize objects. However, rodents can discriminate surface roughness in micrometer resolution throughout their whisker sensing. Rats can distinguish an target object's shape, roughness and surface pattern by moving their whisker back and forth freely. Mechanoreceptors surrounding the whisker in their follicle measure deflection and vibration of the whisker. In this paper, we designed biomimetic whiskers modeling rodent whiskers and showed the characteristic properties to extract the information of surface roughness.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.1061-1062
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• 2008

Rodents demonstrate an outstanding capability for tactile perceptions using their whiskers. The mechanoreceptors in the whisker follicles are responsive to the deflections or vibrations of the whisker beams. It is believed that the sensor processing can determine the location of an object in touch, that is, the angular position and direction of the object. We designed artificial whiskers modelling the real whiskers and tested tactile localization. The robotic system needs to adjust its position against an object to help the shape recognition. We show a robotic adjustment of position based on tactile localization. The behaviour uses deflection curves of the whisker sensors for every sweep of whiskers and estimates the location of a target object.