COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HAPTIC AND VISUAL FEEDBACK FOR KINESTHETIC TRAINING TASKS

Haptics is the sense of simulating and applying the sense of human touch. Application of touch sensations is done with haptic interface devices. The past few years has seen the development of several haptic interface devices with a wide variety of technologies used in their design. This thesis introduces haptic technologies and includes a survey of haptic interface devices and technologies. An improvement in simulating and applying touch sensation when using the Quanser Haptic Wand with proSense is suggested in this work using a novel five degree-of-freedom algorithm. This approach uses two additional torques to enhance the three degree-of-freedom of force feedback currently available with these products. Modern surgical trainers for performing laparoscopic surgery are incorporating haptic feedback in addition to visual feedback for training. This work presents a quantitative comparison of haptic versus visual training. One of the key results of the study is that haptic feedback is better than visual feedback for kinesthetic navigation tasks

Modeling Emotional Valence Integration From Voice and Touch

In the context of designing multimodal social interactions for Human–Computer Interaction and for Computer–Mediated Communication, we conducted an experimental study to investigate how participants combine voice expressions with tactile stimulation to evaluate emotional valence (EV). In this study, audio and tactile stimuli were presented separately, and then presented together. Audio stimuli comprised positive and negative voice expressions, and tactile stimuli consisted of different levels of air jet tactile stimulation performed on the arm of the participants. Participants were asked to evaluate communicated EV on a continuous scale. Information Integration Theory was used to model multimodal valence perception process. Analyses showed that participants generally integrated both sources of information to evaluate EV. The main integration rule was averaging rule. The predominance of a modality over the other modality was specific to each individual

A Comprehensive Survey of the Tactile Internet: State of the art and Research Directions

The Internet has made several giant leaps over the years, from a fixed to a mobile Internet, then to the Internet of Things, and now to a Tactile Internet. The Tactile Internet goes far beyond data, audio and video delivery over fixed and mobile networks, and even beyond allowing communication and collaboration among things. It is expected to enable haptic communication and allow skill set delivery over networks. Some examples of potential applications are tele-surgery, vehicle fleets, augmented reality and industrial process automation. Several papers already cover many of the Tactile Internet-related concepts and technologies, such as haptic codecs, applications, and supporting technologies. However, none of them offers a comprehensive survey of the Tactile Internet, including its architectures and algorithms. Furthermore, none of them provides a systematic and critical review of the existing solutions. To address these lacunae, we provide a comprehensive survey of the architectures and algorithms proposed to date for the Tactile Internet. In addition, we critically review them using a well-defined set of requirements and discuss some of the lessons learned as well as the most promising research directions

Multimodal Human-Machine Interface For Haptic-Controlled Excavators

The goal of this research is to develop a human-excavator interface for the hapticcontrolled excavator that makes use of the multiple human sensing modalities (visual, auditory haptic), and efficiently integrates these modalities to ensure intuitive, efficient interface that is easy to learn and use, and is responsive to operator commands. Two empirical studies were conducted to investigate conflict in the haptic-controlled excavator interface and identify the level of force feedback for best operator performance

Distributed Networks of Listening and Sounding: 20 Years of Telematic Musicking

This paper traces a twenty-year arc of my performance and compositional practice in the medium of telematic music, focusing on a distinct approach to fostering interdependence and emergence through the integration of listening strategies, electroacoustic improvisation, pre-composed structures, blended real/virtual acoustics, networked mutual-influence, shared signal transformations, gesture-concepts and machine agencies. Communities of collaboration and exchange over this time period are discussed, which span both pre- and post-pandemic approaches to the medium that range from metaphors of immersion and dispersion to diffraction

Haptics Rendering and Applications

There has been significant progress in haptic technologies but the incorporation of haptics into virtual environments is still in its infancy. A wide range of the new society's human activities including communication, education, art, entertainment, commerce and science would forever change if we learned how to capture, manipulate and reproduce haptic sensory stimuli that are nearly indistinguishable from reality. For the field to move forward, many commercial and technological barriers need to be overcome. By rendering how objects feel through haptic technology, we communicate information that might reflect a desire to speak a physically- based language that has never been explored before. Due to constant improvement in haptics technology and increasing levels of research into and development of haptics-related algorithms, protocols and devices, there is a belief that haptics technology has a promising future