Abstract
This paper investigates the influence of contact force applied to the human’s fingertip on the perception of hot and cold temperatures, studying how variations in contact force may affect the sensitivity of cutaneous thermoreceptors or their interpretation. A psychophysical experiment involved 18 participants exposed to cold (\({20}\,^{\circ }\text {C}\)) and hot (\({38}\,^{\circ }\text {C}\)) thermal stimuli at varying contact forces, ranging from gentle (0.5 N) to firm (3.5 N) touch. Results show a tendency to overestimate hot temperatures (hot feels hotter than it really is) and underestimate cold temperatures (cold feels colder than it really is) as the contact force increases.
This result might be linked to the increase in the fingertip contact area that occurs as the contact force between the fingertip and the plate delivering the stimuli grows.
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Acknowledgments
This research has been funded by the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 101017884 (GuestXR) and by the Next Generation EU project ECS00000017 “Ecosistema dell’Innova-zione” Tuscany Health Ecosystem (THE, PNRR: Spoke 9: Robotics and Automation for Health).
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Troisi, D. et al. (2025). Studying the Influence of Contact Force on Thermal Perception at the Fingertip. In: Kajimoto, H., et al. Haptics: Understanding Touch; Technology and Systems; Applications and Interaction. EuroHaptics 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14769. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70061-3_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70061-3_13
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