One of the things Gerling is researching is haptics. When you press the screen of your smartphone and feel a vibration, that is haptics. However, men and women generally perceive haptics differently.
Understanding these subtle gender differences and finding ways to minimize them will help improve the increasing use of touch-based technologies, such as clothing with built-in sensors, advanced prosthetics, and even interfaces that allow human doctors to control surgical robots. As humans and machines interact more and more, a strong sense of touch becomes an increasingly important link.
Professor Gregory Gerling, here with his graduate student Chang Xu, and his students are developing tools and methods to scientifically describe our sense of touch. The sense of touch is a crucial part of how we interact with technology, our environment, and each other. (Photo by Tom Daly, UVA Engineering)
To find out why some people’s skin is more sensitive, Gerling and Bingxu Li, who earned a doctorate in systems engineering from UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2023, used a special instrument to gently squeeze and examine the fingertips of 40 participants. Their experiments combined 3D imaging and biomechanical observations of how skin deforms when pressure is applied. By adding statistical analysis and machine learning, they got a better picture of how skin condition affects touch perception.
Age, gender and finger size are all factors, and all of these have been studied in touch research. But, says Gerling, few scientists have investigated the role that skin “stiffness” plays.
Gerling and Li showed that applying an emollient such as hyaluronic acid to the skin improves the sense of touch. While you can’t change your age or finger size, using a skin emollient can significantly improve the sense of touch and close the gender gap.
“Our results show that the way people sense things depends on how their skin touches the object,” said Gerling. “Differences in skin contact affect how the nerves in the skin respond.”
Gerling, an expert in touch science, is one of several university researchers studying the limits of a one-size-fits-all approach to technology, such as why car seat belts protect men better than women. Better understanding of how men and women respond differently to machines can lead to improved interfaces, researchers say.
Softer skin means more nerve fibers in the skin are activated, which researchers say improves the fingertip’s ability to sense small changes. So for an extra soft and sensitive touch, dab some hyaluronic acid onto your fingertips.
