Anthropomorphic Classification of Tactile Qualities of Woven Fabrics Based on Skin/Textile Friction-Induced Vibrations

The common method classifying tactile qualities of fabrics is indirectly based on their difference of purely mechanical and physical properties.When human skin slides across fabric surfaces,the friction interaction between fabrics and skin will occur and trigger the cutaneous tactile receptors,which are responsible for perceived tactile sensation.By the extracted features from frictioninduced vibration signals,this paper presents an anthropomorphic classification method classifying tactile qualities of fabrics.The friction-induced vibration signals are recorded by a three-axis accelerator sensor,and the entire testing procedure is conducted in an anthropomorphic way to obtain vibration signals.The fast Fourier transform( FFT) is applied to analyzing the recoded signals,and then the classification features are extracted from the FFT data by the neurophysiological properties of tactile receptors.The extracted features are used to classify fabric samples by the softness sensation and the roughness sensation,respectively,and the classification performance is checked by a comparison with those in a sensory evaluation procedure.The results showed that the anthropomorphic objective classification method was precise and efficient to classify tactile qualities of woven fabrics.