Fingerprints: Signal Processors for Touch

November 30, 2009 | Source: the physics arXiv blog

Fingerprint ridges and whorls process vibrations in the skin to make them easier for nerves to pick up, University of Paris researchers have found.

Fingerprints act like signal processors, conditioning the mechanical vibrations so that the Pacinian corpuscles can best interpret them. It’s this optimisation process that allows us to sense textures with a spatial resolution far smaller than the distance between Pacinian corpuscles in the skin, an example of “morphological computing.”

This work on fingerprints should have important implications for our understanding of touch. It should also help in the development of better prosthesis and may even help to give robots a better tactile sense of their own.