Haptics: The Technology of Simulating Human Touch
From: InformIT - 01/14/2005
By: Laurie Rowell

Researchers continue to improve haptics technology that will one day enable
more useful robots, fully functional prosthetic limbs, and true computer
virtual reality. In the same way computer vision technology requires an
understanding of optics and building an audio receiver requires an
understanding of acoustics, haptics research means scientists need to know
skin biomechanics. The MIT Touch Lab is working to measure pressure
thresholds and other metrics that will help create touch capabilities for
computer haptics; researchers at the laboratory are focusing on the primate
fingertip and have created a new Ultrasound Backscatter Microscope (UBM) that
depicts the ridges and layers of skin on a fingertip in more detail than
available with magnetic resonance imaging equipment, and are mapping the
friction and compressibility measurements onto 2D and 3D fingertip models.
Another difficulty with haptics is the dual role required of interfaces, in
the sense that any haptic equipment has to communicate touch as well as sense
it. Haptics researchers Peter Berkelman and Ralph Hollis created an ingenious
device several years ago that utilized Lorentz force magnetic levitation in a
force-feedback device: Paired with a computer display showing basic shapes,
users were able to use the haptics device to feel virtual reality surfaces
and even consistently maneuver a peg into a hole. Haptics is also playing an
important role in computer accessibility through products such as the
Cyberglove, which reads American Sign Language through a neural-net algorithm
and also is used for virtual reality and animation. Swedish researchers have
created a sort of haptics user interface that lets visually impaired computer
users feel computer graphics. Haptic mouse technologies give literal meaning
to "drag and drop," applying pressure and simulating the sudden loss of mass,
as well as allowing users to feel grooves at the edges of windows and sense
checkboxes. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=361412

Links:
http://www.immersion.com/3d/products/cyber_glove.php
http://www.vrealities.com/cyber.html
http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/ME/berkelman.htm
http://www.ri.cmu.edu/people/hollis_ralph.html