Once making contact with objects, the change in skin temperature helps us to recognize the material of the contacted object. For example, when touching wood and iron at the same temperature, the skin temperature decreases more and feels colder when touching iron than wood. These thermal cues play a crucial role in material recognition. For research on thermal material recognition, it is essential to collect data on skin temperature changes when touching materials.
To measure the skin temperature change, using human fingers may have limitations in the reliability of the data due to the individual difference in skin and difficulty in controlling finger movement. Therefore, we are exploring the possibility of the artificial finger which can measure thermal transients similar to human fingers.