A Touching Sensation
From: Mechanical Engineering Magazine - November 2003 - page 30
By: Jeam Thilmany, Associate Editor

Haptics technology lends the sense of touch to virtual reality. That might
not sound very exciting, but it's being used to train surgeons and
rehabilitate patients.  

Through the years, Grigore Burdea (a professor at the Center for Advanced
Information Processing at Rutgers University) and his team have applied
variants of that force-feedback glove to help people regain use of their
hands after a stroke or surgery. The patients put on the force-feedback
glove, which is connected to a computer, and simulate squeezing a rubber
ball. The glove provides the feel of the ball. 

Burdea and his team have expanded the technology to what they call the
Rutgers ankle, which aims to help rehabilitate the foot. A patient places his
or her foot on a mobile platform and then performs exercises prompted on the
computer screen. The platform resists the patient, with the resistance
changing in accordance with how strongly the patient is pressing down.  

A larger version of the Rutgers ankle allows patients to simulate walking,
including walking over a variety of terrain like mud or gravel, or up stairs.
The walking ankle beats simple treadmill walking - which is often used in
physical therapy today - because it allows patients to master walking on an
uneven terrain or on an incline. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.memagazine.org/contents/current/features/touching/touching.html

Links:
http://www.caip.rutgers.edu/vrlab/projects/ankle/ankle.html
http://www.caip.rutgers.edu/vrlab/burdea/burdea.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-01/rtsu-rdv012402.php
http://ur.rutgers.edu/medrel/viewArticle.html?ArticleID=2039