Generic and structured description of tactile sensory perceptions
Résumé
In the field of quality control of products, very few applications make use of the sense of touch. Touch involves complex physical phenomena, mainly related to contact and friction. Being able to master this type of product control presupposes the understanding of how the tactile perception of a product is constructed. Moreover, realizing quality control by means of a comparison to a reference is important in order to ensure customer satisfaction. Looking at the tactile descriptors usually proposed, one can observe that these descriptors are generally strongly related to specific products and languages. In addition, they are often intended to be used in the design process of new products. This paper focuses on the measuring of the tactile sensory perception in a production context. Although the sensory analysis of the customer perception is not the main topic here, the specificities of the tactile control in production detailed in this paper are based on it. In particular, the aim is to guarantee the expected sensory perceptions of the customer, independently from those of the inspectors in charge of product control. This feature induces the need for a new classification of the tactile descriptors to be used in quality control. The paper describes the process of tactile perception by analogy with the process of visual perception which is better formalized. An inventory of the tactile descriptors mentioned in the literature is done and a list of the relevant ones in the context of tactile control of product is proposed. Several methods for the structuring of these descriptors are analyzed, with the focus put on obtaining a very small list of descriptors. Indeed, this is essential in order to reduce the variability of the results usually seen in this type of control. Finally, this paper shows how ontologies can be used, through the representation of these descriptors as well as the relations between them, in order to model the expertise associated with tactile control. The aim of this modelling is to lead to the automation (or semi-automation) of this type of control.The originality of the paper is the proposal of a different, overall generic, way to address the tactile perception of a product, while mainly focusing on sensory measurements in production.