Exohand - Its Haptic Baby!
Prepare to be blown away with this post! Here at the Hub one of the things that we are all about is the coming merger of the physical world with the virtual world. Programmable matter, moving beyond the outdated mouse and keyboard interface model, immersive environments, and so on. Now we are here to tell you about a seriously game changing technology that is absolutely busting apart the traditional barrier between the physical and virtual worlds. Its called haptics, and if you haven’t heard about it yet then read on and prepare to be thrilled.
Dramatic opening paragraph, I know, but I am just so excited about the possibilities of haptics that it is hard for me to hold back. Haptics is the set of technologies that causes a person operating a device to engage in a sensory feedback loop between what the device is feeling and seeing and what the person is feeling and seeing. Sound confusing? Keep reading, it will make sense!
Today most graphics designers draw things on a computer the old fashioned way using the mouse and keyboard to interface with their design software. Haptics changes all of this. Imagine instead of a mouse that you have a wand or joystick that can serve as your paintbrush, eraser, scalpel, etc as you design an object on the computer. As you push down on the virtual object you are designing on the computer with your joystick you can actually feel pressure push back on you from the joystick. Its a completely different way of graphics design that will rewrite the rules of the game. Speaking of games, haptics also has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry. Check out this video to see what I am talking about:
After watching the video hopefully you agree that this is some pretty cool stuff! To fully grasp the potential of this disruptive technology, you have to keep in mind that the haptic device you are controlling does not have to be in the same physical location as the object, game, or target you are manipulating.
Imagine a surgeon performing surgery on a patient half way across the world using a haptic device. The surgeon would be able to feel, see, and even smell the organs and tissue of the remote patient with a sensitivity and realness that is indistinguishable from physically being there. Of course the technology still has a ways to go to get to that point, but not as much as you might think. Remember our coverage of the da vinci surgical robot? This robot is currently taking the practice of surgery by storm as it allows surgeons to operate a suite of scalpels, cameras, pincers, and other devices to perform surgery with a level of precision and agility that exceeds natural, unaided human ability. Several efforts are underway to augment the Da Vinci robot with haptic capabilities. And as you will see in a video at the end of this post, haptic based remote surgery has already been achieved several years ago. Yikes!
Graphics design and gaming seem to be the first killer apps that will be amenable to haptic enhancement. The gaming industry in particular has the financial incentive and the platform to make this happen soon. As seen in the video above, products are already on the market for the gaming industry and the real problem is not the technology, but rather the integration of device and game. Once the gaming industry can work with the haptic device industry to create an open standard that will allow any haptic device to interface seemlessly with any game we might see an explosion in haptically enabled gaming.
Aside from the Falcon device from Novint, there are some other serious players in this field. Two others you should check out if you want to learn more are Sensable with their Phantom line of products and Quanser with their large suite of products. Here is an illustrative (hah!) example of the Quanser device in action:
The potential for haptics is just out of control. We’ll be keeping an eye on this emerging field continually here at the Hub, so stay tuned for updates in the future. In the meantime, haptics is a technology that lends itself very well to video demonstrations, so lets end this post with yet another video demo that is pretty cool as long as you can tune out the cheesy host:
Tags: haptic, tactile, virtual reality
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Open source API for programming, http://www.h3d.org
“Today most graphics designers draw things on a computer the old fashioned way using the mouse and keyboard to interface with their design software.”
Sorry, but that is just plain rubbish.
Today most graphics designers use pens on touch/angle/pressure/tilt sensitive tablets or even screens (if they can afford them).
The tablets have been around for over two decades.
They btw. rely a prooven haptive interface that human artists have been favored since dozens of millenia.
[...] Singularity Hub (USA) – Haptics Unleashes Virtual Reality and Telepresence Revolution – Awesome Vids. “Whoah! Prepare to be blown away with this post! Here at the Hub one of the things that we [...]
Moritz,
Thanks for your comment. I think maybe the truth is somewhere in between these two extremes. Many graphics designers are using much more advanced tools than I have lead readers to believe, but I suspect quite a few graphics designers are way behind the curve and are still strictly keyboard and mouse. That won’t change I guess though. Even as haptics becomes more widespread and used, there will still be many that fail to pick it up.
Graphic designers are 2D / 2 1/2D and the haptic devices above have 3 – 6 degrees of freedom so are great for working more intuitively for 3D modelling. We use Novint’s Falcon for our sketch/modelling package (vid: http://bit.ly/10AcqB) as it is affordable making this technology accessible to 3D content creators. Ours is aimed at designers and artists for working through ideas in the concept stage when fast and fluid is what is required.
[...] Shared Haptics Unleashes Virtual Reality and Telepresence Revolution – Awesome Vids [...]
[...] http://singularityhub.com/2009/07/31/haptics-unleashes-virtual-reality-and-telepresence-revolution-... [...]
As a professional graphic designer for ten years, I can say with confidence that is is most certainly not “somewhere in between.” No professional graphic designer uses a mouse and keyboard for drawing, and they haven’t for years. I’ve yet to see one in my entire professional life. I’ve seen a few use older, cheap Graphire tablets, but nearly everyone else is using mid-range tablets.
[...] whole new way to interact with your software. It’s somewhere, but not quite, on the level of haptics we’ve discussed before. Even with just visual feedback, however, the keyboard would allow a [...]
[...] whole new way to interact with your software. It’s somewhere, but not quite, on the level of haptics we’ve discussed before. Even with just visual feedback, however, the keyboard would allow a [...]
[...] about the rest of the technology promised in Surrogates? Singularity Hub has already told you about haptics, feeling what your robot feels, and Braingate, the technology of reading your mind in order to [...]
[...] substitution for face to face meetings. As remote presence technology improves, incorporating the ability to feel physical objects using haptics, we could see the business flight go the way of the [...]
[...] Haptics Unleashes Virtual Reality and Telepresence Revolution [...]
[...] in entertainment would allow video gamers to immerse themselves in the action. When combined with haptics and telepresence, ODTs could provide the means of creating virtual work environments, allowing researchers to [...]
[...] when we’ve discussed haptics (sense of touch interfaces), it has been in relation to remote access or telepresence robots. At [...]
[...] haptics, the transfer of sensation from the digital world to the real world, we often discuss the next generation of human-computer interfaces. Future hardware and software could become more intuitive when you can actually feel what you are [...]
[...] not sure if squeezably soft 3D rubber screen-toppers count as haptics devices, but there’s certainly something rewarding about having any sort of tactile interaction with [...]
[...] beginning. Once we are able to transmit sensation from a machine to a human (a capability known as haptics) people will feel what is happening to the robot they are operating. In essence, you will be able [...]