Objetivo
This project envisages establishing a new generation of high-fidelity haptic display technologies. The newly developed systems will not only cover haptic interaction but also attempt to complement haptic information by visual and auditory input.
To achieve these goals, two main threads will be followed:
On one side, the consortium will explore and develop new technologies, which will be used to significantly improve haptic displays. On the other side the psychophysical basis of human haptic perception will be investigated. One goal is to exploit haptic illusions to overcome fundamental technological limitations.
Four demonstrators covering typical application scenarios with a critical technological challenge will be developed: Haptic interaction with biological tissues, haptic texture rendering and recognition, the simulation of rigid objects with clearly defined, sharp edges, and multi-modal volumetric exploration systems. This project envisages establishing a new generation of high-fidelity haptic display technologies. The newly developed systems will not only cover haptic interaction but also attempt to complement haptic information by visual and auditory input.
To achieve these goals, two main threads will be followed:
On one side, the consortium will explore and develop new technologies, which will be used to significantly improve haptic displays. On the other side the psychophysical basis of human haptic perception will be investigated. One goal is to exploit haptic illusions to overcome fundamental technological limitations.
Four demonstrators covering typical application scenarios with a critical technological challenge will be developed: Haptic interaction with biological tissues, haptic texture rendering and recognition, the simulation of rigid objects with clearly defined, sharp edges, and multi-modal volumetric exploration systems.
OBJECTIVES
The main idea of this project is to build new generation high-fidelity haptic display systems with a special focus on psychophysical knowledge in the design. The first major objective is to investigate how the sensation of haptic presence can be generated (in conjunction with vision).
Apart from these scientific foundations two technological objectives are:
1) to investigate non-mechanical principles of force generation to develop totally new, free-hand haptic interaction systems;
2) to advance and integrate existing technology into new, high-fidelity haptic systems. These objectives will be interlinked with the psychophysical investigations of the human haptic system and its interactions with the auditory and visual systems. Results are design principles for haptic systems to circumvent technological limitations and to optimise human interaction. As testbed applications we will develop and evaluate demonstrators for soft tissue, rigid (stiff) object interaction, haptic textile rendering and multi-modal interaction.
DESCRIPTION OF WORK
TOUCH-HAPSYS targets at establishing a well balanced combination of fundamental and high-risk research. The psychophysical fundamentals of haptic and visuo-haptic immersion and presence will be investigated in two major threads: First, we will research the basic principles of touch phenomena. Starting from the physics of biological contact phenomena we will use psychophysical and neuro-physiological methods to study early cortical processing of haptic perception. We will determine which cues are necessary for generating sensation of being present and in touch. Secondly, we will investigate the interactions of touch and vision in virtual environments with the goal to optimise the feeling of immersion and presence. We will concentrate on object representation, object recognition, attention, and the integration of information from vision and touch. The study of potential non-mechanical actuation principles aims at completely novel actuator designs. One likely outcome will be an innovative haptic actuator system based on magnetorheological fluids. Another goal is the understanding of multi-modal (visual, auditory, haptic) perception mechanisms. Based on a mathematical modelling framework for multi-modal perception we will explore possibilities for haptic illusions allowing circumventing technological limitations. The fundamental research questions will be validated and complemented by prototypical haptic system developments. An advanced haptic feedback system in combination with novel tactile shear force, vibro-tactile pin-type, and multi-layer multi-bandwidth tactile actuator prototypes will be developed. These device developments are a balanced combination of high-risk research projects complemented by mid-risk force-feedback developments, ensuring the success of the TOUCH-HAPSYS project. The integrated high-definition haptic systems will provide a testbed for future applications and serve as an experimental environment for psychophysical research for the evaluati on of haptic and multi-modal illusion processes.
Four application oriented benchmark demonstrators with different technological challenges will be developed: soft tissue simulation (medical surgery, training, teaching), haptic textile rendering (web-based commerce, eEurope), rigid, stiff object interaction (rapid, digital mock-up prototyping) and multi-modal volumetric data exploration (segmentation, visualization). These will enable the validation of the developed methods to evolve into next generation haptic systems.