Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2022, held in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2022. The 36 regular papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 129 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: haptic science; haptic technology; and haptic applications

Robotic manipulators for single access surgery

This thesis explores the development of cooperative robotic manipulators for enhancing surgical precision and patient outcomes in single-access surgery and, specifically, Transanal Endoscopic Microsurgery (TEM). During these procedures, surgeons manipulate a heavy set of instruments via a mechanical clamp inserted in the patient’s body through a surgical port, resulting in imprecise movements, increased patient risks, and increased operating time. Therefore, an articulated robotic manipulator with passive joints is initially introduced, featuring built-in position and force sensors in each joint and electronic joint brakes for instant lock/release capability. The articulated manipulator concept is further improved with motorised joints, evolving into an active tool holder. The joints allow the incorporation of advanced robotic capabilities such as ultra-lightweight gravity compensation and hands-on kinematic reconfiguration, which can optimise the placement of the tool holder in the operating theatre. Due to the enhanced sensing capabilities, the application of the active robotic manipulator was further explored in conjunction with advanced image guidance approaches such as endomicroscopy. Recent advances in probe-based optical imaging such as confocal endomicroscopy is making inroads in clinical uses. However, the challenging manipulation of imaging probes hinders their practical adoption. Therefore, a combination of the fully cooperative robotic manipulator with a high-speed scanning endomicroscopy instrument is presented, simplifying the incorporation of optical biopsy techniques in routine surgical workflows. Finally, another embodiment of a cooperative robotic manipulator is presented as an input interface to control a highly-articulated robotic instrument for TEM. This master-slave interface alleviates the drawbacks of traditional master-slave devices, e.g., using clutching mechanics to compensate for the mismatch between slave and master workspaces, and the lack of intuitive manipulation feedback, e.g. joint limits, to the user. To address those drawbacks a joint-space robotic manipulator is proposed emulating the kinematic structure of the flexible robotic instrument under control.Open Acces

Desktop haptic virtual assembly using physically-based part modeling

This research investigates the feasibility of using a desktop haptic virtual environment as a design tool for evaluating assembly operations. Bringing virtual reality characteristics to the desktop, such as stereo vision, further promotes the use of this technology into the every day engineering design process. In creating such a system, the affordability and availablity of hardware/software tools is taken into consideration. The resulting application combines several software packages including VR Juggler, ODE (Open Dynamics Engine)/OPAL (Open Physic Abstraction Layer), OpenHaptics, and OpenGL/GLM/GLUT libraries to explore the benefits and limitations of combining haptics with physically-based modeling. The equipment used to display stereo graphics includes a Stereographies Emitter, Crystal Eyes shutter glasses, and a high refresh rate CRT Monitor. One or two-handed force feedback is obtained from various PHANTOM haptic devices from SensAble Technologies. The application\u27s ability to handle complex part interactions is tested using two different computer systems which approximate the higher and lower end of a typical engineer\u27s workstation. Different test scenarios are analyzed and results presented with regards to collision detection and physical response accuracies

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020. The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topical sections on haptic science, haptic technology, and haptic applications. This year's focus is on accessibility

Enhancing the use of Haptic Devices in Education and Entertainment

This research was part of the two-years Horizon 2020 European Project "weDRAW". The aim of the project was that "specific sensory systems have specific roles to learn specific concepts". This work explores the use of the haptic modality, stimulated by the means of force-feedback devices, to convey abstract concepts inside virtual reality. After a review of the current use of haptic devices in education, available haptic software and game engines, we focus on the implementation of an haptic plugin for game engines (HPGE, based on state of the art rendering library CHAI3D) and its evaluation in human perception experiments and multisensory integration

Haptic Interaction with 3D oriented point clouds on the GPU

Real-time point-based rendering and interaction with virtual objects is gaining popularity and importance as di�erent haptic devices and technologies increasingly provide the basis for realistic interaction. Haptic Interaction is being used for a wide range of applications such as medical training, remote robot operators, tactile displays and video games. Virtual object visualization and interaction using haptic devices is the main focus; this process involves several steps such as: Data Acquisition, Graphic Rendering, Haptic Interaction and Data Modi�cation. This work presents a framework for Haptic Interaction using the GPU as a hardware accelerator, and includes an approach for enabling the modi�cation of data during interaction. The results demonstrate the limits and capabilities of these techniques in the context of volume rendering for haptic applications. Also, the use of dynamic parallelism as a technique to scale the number of threads needed from the accelerator according to the interaction requirements is studied allowing the editing of data sets of up to one million points at interactive haptic frame rates

An Optimal Medium for Haptics

Humans rely on multimodal perception to form representations of the world. This implies that environmental stimuli must remain consistent and predictable throughout their journey to our sensory organs. When it comes to vision, electromagnetic waves are minimally affected when passing through air or glass treated for chromatic aberrations. Similar conclusions can be drawn for hearing and acoustic waves. However, tools that propagate elastic waves to our cutaneous afferents tend to color tactual perception due to parasitic mechanical attributes such as resonances and inertia. These issues are often overlooked, despite their critical importance for haptic devices that aim to faithfully render or record tactile interactions. Here, we investigate how to optimize this mechanical transmission with sandwich structures made from rigid, lightweight carbon fiber sheets arranged around a 3D-printed lattice core. Through a comprehensive parametric evaluation, we demonstrate that this design paradigm provides superior haptic transparency. Drawing an analogy with topology optimization, our solution approaches a foreseeable technological limit. This novel medium offers a practical way to create high-fidelity haptic interfaces, opening new avenues for research on tool-mediated interactions

Design and characterization of a fabric-based softness display

To enable a realistic tactile interaction with remote or virtual objects, softness information represents a fundamental property to be rendered via haptic devices. What is challenging is to reduce the complexity of such an information as it arises from contact mechanics and to find suitable simplifications that can lead an effective development of softness displays. A possible approach is to surrogate detailed tactile cues with information on the rate of spread of the contact area between the object and the finger as the contact force increases, i.e. force/area relation. This paradigm is called contact area spread rate. In this paper we discuss how such a paradigm has inspired the design of a tactile device (hereinafter referred to as Fabric Yielding Display, FYD-2), which exploits the elasticity of a fabric to mimic different levels of stiffness, while the contact area on the finger indenting the fabric is measured. In this manner, the FYD-2 can be controlled to reproduce force-area characteristics. In this work, we describe the FYD-2 architecture and report a psychophysical characterization. FYD-2 is shown to be able to accurately reproduce force-area curves of typical objects and to enable a reliable softness discrimination in human users

A hybrid rugosity mesostructure (HRM) for rendering fine haptic detail

The haptic rendering of surface mesostructure (fine relief features) in dense triangle meshes requires special structures, equipment, and high sampling rates for detailed perception of rugged models. Some approaches simulate haptic texture at a lower processing cost, but at the expense of fidelity of perception. We propose a better method for rendering fine surface detail by using image-based Hybrid Rugosity Mesostructures (HRMs), composed of paired maps of piece-wise heightfield displacements and corresponding normals, which are layered on top of a less complex mesh, adding greater surface detail than the one actually present in the geometry. The core of the algorithm renders surface features by modulating the haptic probe's force response using a blended HRM coat. The proposed method solves typical problems arising at edge crossings, concave foldings and smoothing texture stitching transitions across edges. By establishing a common set of specially devised meshes, HRM mesostructures, and a battery of performance tests, we build a usability testing framework that allows a fair and balanced experimental procedure for comparing haptic rendering approaches. The trial results and user testing evaluations show the goodness of the proposed HRM technique in the accurate rendering of high 3D surface detail at low processing costs, deriving useful modeling and perception thresholds for this technique.Postprint (published version

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020. The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topical sections on haptic science, haptic technology, and haptic applications. This year's focus is on accessibility