Kinesthetic Illusion of Being Pulled Sensation Enables Haptic Navigation for Broad Social Applications

Many handheld force-feedback devices have been proposed to provide a rich experience with mobile devices. However, previously reported devices have been unable to generate both constant and translational force. They can only generate transient rotational force since they use a change in angular momentum. Here, we exploit the nonlinearity of human perception to generate both constant and translational force. Specifically, a strong acceleration is generated for a very brief period in the desired direction, while a weaker acceleration is generated over a longer period in the opposite direction. The internal human haptic sensors do not detect the weaker acceleration, so the original position of the mass is \"washed out\". The result is that the user is tricked into perceiving a unidirectional force. This force can be made continuous by repeating the motions. This chapter describes the pseudoattraction force technique, which is a new force feedback technique that enables mobile devices to create a the sensation of two-dimensional force. A prototype was fabricated in which four slider-crank mechanism pairs were arranged in a cross shape and embedded in a force feedback display. Each slider-crank mechanism generates a force vector. By using the sum of the generated vectors, which are linearly independent, the force feedback display can create a force sensation in any arbitrary direction on a two-dimensional plane. We also introduce an interactive application with the force feedback display, an interactive robot, and a vision-based positioning system

Interference and switching effect of topological interfacial modes with geometric phase

We investigate interference between topological interfacial modes in a semiconductor photonic crystal platform with Dirac frequency dispersions, which can be exploited for interferometry switch. It is showcased that, in a two-in/two-out structure with four topological waveguides, geometric phases of the two-component spinor wavefunctions of topological photonic modes accumulate at turning points of waveguides, which govern the interferences and split the electromagnetic energy into two output ports with relative power ratio tunable by the relative phase of inputs. We unveil that this brand-new photonic phenomenon is intimately related to the spin-momentum locking property of quantum spin Hall effect, and results from the symphonic contributions of three phase variables: the spinor phase and geometric phase upon design, and the global phase controlled from outside. The present findings open the door for manipulating topological interfacial modes, thus exposing a new facet of topological physics. The topology-driven interference can be incorporated into other devices which is expected to leave far-reaching impacts to advanced photonics, optomechanics and phononics applications.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figure

Intranasal Chemosensory Lateralization Through the Multi-electrode Transcutaneous Electrical Nasal Bridge Stimulation

Numerous studies have been conducted on display techniques for intranasal chemosensory perception. However, a limited number of studies have focused on the presentation of sensory spatial information. To artificially produce intranasal chemosensory spatial perception, we focused on a technique to induce intranasal chemosensation by transcutaneous electrical stimulation between the nasal bridge and the back of the neck. Whether this technique stimulates the trigeminal nerve or the olfactory nerve remains debatable; if this method stimulates the trigeminal nerve, the differences in the amount of stimulation to the left and right trigeminal branches would evoke lateralization of intranasal chemosensory perception. Therefore, we propose a novel method to lateralize intranasal chemosensation by selectively stimulating the left or right trigeminal nerve branches through the shifting of an electrode on the nasal bridge to the left or right. Finite element simulations reveal that electrical stimulation applied between the electrodes on the left/right nasal bridge and the back of the neck results in the construction of a high current density area on the left/right branch of the trigeminal nerve. The results of two psychophysical experiments reveal that intranasal chemosensation can be lateralized by using the proposed method. The results of our experiment also suggest that lateralization is not the result of electrically induced tactile sensation of the skin surface but rather due to the distribution of stimuli to the trigeminal nerves. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first successful lateralization of intranasal chemosensation that utilizes an easy-to-apply method without involving nostril blocking

Leveraging Tendon Vibration to Enhance Pseudo-Haptic Perceptions in VR

Pseudo-haptic techniques are used to modify haptic perception by appropriately changing visual feedback to body movements. Based on the knowledge that tendon vibration can affect our somatosensory perception, this paper proposes a method for leveraging tendon vibration to enhance pseudo-haptics during free arm motion. Three experiments were performed to examine the impact of tendon vibration on the range and resolution of pseudo-haptics. The first experiment investigated the effect of tendon vibration on the detection threshold of the discrepancy between visual and physical motion. The results indicated that vibrations applied to the inner tendons of the wrist and elbow increased the threshold, suggesting that tendon vibration can augment the applicable visual motion gain by approximately 13\% without users detecting the visual/physical discrepancy. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that tendon vibration acts as noise on haptic motion cues. The second experiment assessed the impact of tendon vibration on the resolution of pseudo-haptics by determining the just noticeable difference in pseudo-weight perception. The results suggested that the tendon vibration does not largely compromise the resolution of pseudo-haptics. The third experiment evaluated the equivalence between the weight perception triggered by tendon vibration and that by visual motion gain, that is, the point of subjective equality. The results revealed that vibration amplifies the weight perception and its effect was equivalent to that obtained using a gain of 0.64 without vibration, implying that the tendon vibration also functions as an additional haptic cue. Our results provide design guidelines and future work for enhancing pseudo-haptics with tendon vibration.Comment: This paper has been accepted by IEEE TVC

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead