Table Of ContentContents
Preface IX
Part 1 Haptic Perception 1
Chapter 1 Haptic Concepts 3
Phuong Do, Donald Homa, Ryan Ferguson and Thomas Crawford
Chapter 2 Computer Graphic and PHANToM
Haptic Displays: Powerful Tools to
Understand How Humans Perceive Heaviness 25
Satoru Kawai, Paul H. Faust, Jr. and Christine L. MacKenzie
Chapter 3 On the Integration of Tactile and Force Feedback 47
Marco Fontana, Emanuele Ruffaldi,
Fabio Salasedo and Massimo Bergamasco
Chapter 4 Spatial Biases and the Haptic
Experience of Surface Orientation 75
Frank H. Durgin and Zhi Li
Part 2 Haptic Rendering 95
Chapter 5 Abstract Feelings Emerging from Haptic Stimulation 97
Kohske Takahashi, Hideo Mitsuhashi, Kazuhito Murata,
Shin Norieda and Katsumi Watanabe
Chapter 6 Effective Haptic Rendering
Method for Complex Interactions 115
Josune Hernantes, Iñaki Díaz, Diego Borro and Jorge Juan Gil
Part 3 Haptic Medical Modelling and Applications 131
Chapter 7 Sensorized Tools for Haptic Force
Feedback in Computer Assisted Surgery 133
Arne Sieber, Keith Houston, Christian Woegerer,
Peter Enoksson, Arianna Menciassi and Paolo Dario
VI Contents
Chapter 8 Haptic Device System for Upper Limb
and Cognitive Rehabilitation – Application
for Development Disorder Children 151
Yoshiyuki Takahashi, Yuko Ito, Kaoru Inoue,
Yumi Ikeda, Tasuku Miyoshi, Takafumi Terada,
Ho kyoo Lee and Takashi Komeda
Chapter 9 Development of a Detailed
Human Spine Model with Haptic Interface 165
Kim Tho Huynh, Ian Gibson and Zhan Gao
Chapter 10 Training Motor Skills Using Haptic Interfaces 195
Otniel Portillo-Rodriguez, Carlo Avizzano,
Oscar Sandoval Gonzalez, Adriana Vilchis-Gonzalez,
Mariel Davila-Vilchis and Massimo Bergamasco
Part 4 Haptics and Games 215
Chapter 11 The Role of Haptics in Games 217
Mauricio Orozco, Juan Silva,
Abdulmotaleb El Saddik and Emil Petriu
Preface
Society is becoming based on information gathering, manipulation, and dissemination.
We are witnessing an ever-growing and evolving content delivery market
accompanied by significant restructuring worldwide. Such continuous changes reflect
the need for specialization of new content, dynamic access to content to enable timely
reaction, flexible delivery, customized presentation structures, interactivity and
collaboration. These changes are caused and enabled by the transformation in the
delivery mode from paper to electronic media formats and the growing trends
towards interactive services delivering information in full accordance with the
declared interests of the end-user. Haptics, a term that was derived from the Greek
verb “haptesthai”, meaning “to touch”, refers to the science of sensing and
manipulation through touch. This word was introduced at the beginning of the
twentieth century by researchers in the field of experimental psychology to refer to the
active touch of real objects by humans. In the late nineteen eighties, the term was
redefined to enlarge its scope and to include all aspects of machine touch and human-
machine touch interaction. The ‘touching’ of objects can be by humans, machines, or a
combination of both; the environment can be real, virtual, or a combination of both.
Currently, the term has brought together many disciplines including biomechanics,
psychology, neurophysiology, engineering and computer science to refer to the study
of human touch and force feedback with the external environment.
It is worth mentioning that even with the significant progress in haptic technologies,
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 be overcome. First, business models/frameworks are
needed to make haptic devices practical, inexpensive and widely accessible;
ultimately, a haptic device should be as easily pluggable as the mouse in a computer.
Moreover, multipoint, multihand and multiperson interaction scenarios need further
investigations to reach enticingly rich interactivity. Finally, we should not forget that
touch and physical interaction are fundamental in haptic systems development. By
rendering how objects feel through haptic technology, we communicate information
X Preface
that might reflect a desire to speak a physically-based language that has never been
explored before.
Traditionally, the most typical style of human-computer interaction has been the
visual style, which means people mainly interact with computers via texts, data, and
images on the screen. There has only been indirect manipulation between human and
computers. Keyboards and mouses have been used to translate human body
languages and project these movements into actions on the screen. Using such indirect
manipulation input devices, human don’t receive any force feedback about these
actions. Haptics technology, on the other hand, provides a new style of interaction and
facilitates the perception of objects through the sense of touch.
The complexity of haptics applications is usually the very first obstacle for both
developers and users. Haptics technology requires highly specialized hardware and
software. This equipment is expensive for single daily users to obtain, not to mention
the prototypes of these devices which are usually too large and not easily portable.
Moreover, to complete a haptics project, experts from many different disciplines need
to co-operate. To sum up, haptics technology nowadays is still in its early stage, there
are still many problems waiting to be solved and obstacles to be surmounted.
Without question, haptics technology is a revolution in the way in which we interact in
the virtual world. Haptics prototypes will continue to be refined and there will be
further research into the human-computer interface. User patterns and preferences
will also be further investigated. Meanwhile, researchers and developers will continue
to improve the accuracy of capturing human movements and providing the proper
force feedback.
Experts are also working on producing portable and consumer-grade haptic devices.
Hopefully, with the arrival of these consumer-grade haptic devices on the markets,
researchers will be able to obtain more real-time information, as well as feedback from
customers and they can then further improve the haptic technology. With related
technology improving every day, more and more pieces of research on haptics topics
are being published. I believe there is a promising future for haptics technology.
Dedication
For my wife Ligia and my beloved kids Ikram, Yasmin, Hamdi and Aisha
With Love
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Abdulmotaleb El Saddik,
FIEEE, FCAE, FEIC, P.Eng. University Research Chair
in Ambient Interactive Media & Communications,
Director: Multimedia Communications Research Laboratory (MCRLab),
School of Information Technology and Engineering (SITE),
University of Ottawa,
Canada
Part 1
Haptic Perception
