With the widespread availability of computers and mobile devices, we use them for daily communication by exchanging visual and verbal/non-verbal media. We obtain various information from multimedia devices, and such devices recently have a touch panel interface to allow a user to intuitively and interactively use them. A touch panel consists of a touch-sensitive panel and a graphical display, and accepts user's intuitive touch inputs together with visual and auditory feedback. With the employment of touch actions in such interface devices, tactile feedback will be expected, if we consider the manipulation of a real object. For presenting tactile feedback, some tactile actuators have been introduced recently, however these actuators require the reference from real objects to generate the appropriate tactile sensations, and the input data to be associated with the output tactile sensations should be precisely prepared in the design of such systems. This study introduces a tactile pen to work with a touch screen, together with an algorithm to automatically generate parameters from an object's picture for driving tactile actuators. A tactile presentation system with a visual display is constructed, and the validity of the texture sensations is verified by a user's experiment.

Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases which causes high blood sugar to a person, due to the functional problems of the pancreas or the metabolism. For a person with diabetes, glucose would not be used properly in the metabolic system, and cause health problems, such as polyphagia, polyuria and polydipsia, since glucose is the main source of energy for the body cells. Symptoms of untreated diabetes would be damaged by the high blood sugar in vessels, and this starts to destroy capillary vessels to lower the sensitivity of tactile sensations, then effects to various organs and nerve systems. The authors pay attention to the decline of the sensitivity of tactile sensations associated with diabetes, and develop a non-destructive screening method of the level of diabetes using a novel micro-vibration actuator that employs a shape-memory alloy wire. The actuators are arranged in an array, and various tactile stimuli are generated by just controlling the driving current signals. The tactile stimuli are presented to symptom's, index and middle fingers., and he/she responds to the stimuli by answering how they are perceived. We made an experiment in a medical clinic., and examined the relation between the Hb Al C values and tactile stimuli.

Humans communicate with each other by using not only verbal media but also the five senses such as vision, audition, olfaction and tactile sensations. Various devices and systems have been introduced for supporting human communication, and most of them are based on visual and auditory media. For presenting tactile sensations, some tactile actuators have been introduced recently, however these actuators require real objects to generate the various tactile sensations and input data to be associated with output tactile sensations should be prepared manually by a user. This study introduces an algorithm to automatically generate parameters from an object's image for driving tactile actuators. A tactile presentation system is constructed, and the validity of the texture sensations is verified by a user's experiment.