A Rotating Drum Stimulator for Scanning Embossed Patterns and Textures Across the Skin

A tactile stimulator is described that moves embossed or textured patterns tangentially across the skin. Patterns constructed by standard photoetching are mounted on the outer surface of a cylinder that rotates at a selected speed and is held in contact with the skin at a selected force. The stimulator operates in several modes to meet the different requirements of psychophysical and neurophysiological experiments. The features of note are (i) relatively small size and weight; (ii) flexible automated control of drum contact with the skin, angular velocity, axial position, and contact force; (iii) monitoring of drum angular and axial location to better than 10 micron accuracy; (iv) construction with commercially available devices; (v) electronic monitoring of skin contact; and (vi) rapid drum changes (2 seconds) during psychophysical or neurophysiological experiments.