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Information Technology on Five Senses
7
AIST TODAY 2005-Summe
6AIST TODAY 2005-Summer
7
AIST TODAY 2005-Summe
6AIST TODAY 2005-Summer
Haptic Displays - Information Displays
for the Sense of Touch
Juli Yamashita Institute for Human Science and Biomedical Engineering Skill Research Group
Haptic display
What does the word "display" make you
think of? We must look at a "visual display,"
such as a "liquid crystal display" to "see"
or understand information processed by a
computer. In other words, a visual display
is a device that presents information to our
vision.
A "haptic display" is a device that enables
us to "touch and feel" information in a
computer. The word "haptic" means "relating
to or based on the sense of touch." A haptic
display allows us feel such information as an
object's hardness, viscosity, and warmth that
would be diffi cu lt to see on a visual display.
Haptic≃Cutaneous + Kinesthetic ?
The eye is the only organ of vision that
accepts light signals. In contrast, the sense
of touch is a ver y complex and unified
sensation felt by many kinds of receptors
in the body. In this article, let us divide
"haptic" into two categories, "cutaneous" and
"kinesthetic."
The cutaneous sense is mainly felt by the
skin, which is the largest haptic organ and
contains several different kinds of receptors
responding to pressure, temperature, skew,
and tension. With this sense, we recognize
the roughness of a surface, or surface
texture, vibration, and temperature of an
object.
The kinesthetic sense, or kinesthesia,
is a sense mediated by receptors located
deep inside the body, such as muscles,
tendons, and joints, and stimulated by bodily
movement and tension. We use this sense to
recognize the physical shape and softness of
an object in the hand; we capture its shape
through joint angles and feel its softness by
the tension of associated muscles or the force
we apply.
These two categories actually are not so
clearly separated, however; for example, it is
reported that skin stretching or shrinking (i.e.
cutaneous sense) around a joint affects the
sense of its angle (kinesthesia).
Va ri o us ha p ti c d i sp l ay s
In the last two decades, ma ny kinds
of haptic displays have been researched
and developed. The variety of devices is a
consequence of the complex nature of this
sense and the mechanisms to artificially
stimulate it. Cutaneous displays showing
surface texture by stimulating the skin can
be implemented using an array of thin rods
that vibrate or poke out (Photo 1), a thin fi lm
with well-controlled vibrations, and even an
electromagnetic stimulator of skin receptors.
The basic idea of a kinesthetic display, or
a force display, is to immediately evoke the
"right" reaction force when the user touches
a virtual object. Displays in this category can
also vary widely, including an "exoskeleton"
type (the user wears an "armor suit" device
controlled by motors and computers to
Figure: Comparing the Max. Exertable Forces of Point-Contact-Type Force Displays
The point- contact type i s the m ost widely used f orce display (commercial products are sho wn as
outlined symbols).
Photo1: Cutaneous displays (rod-array type)
LEFT: This display has been developed for the blind; letters and diagrams can
be drawn by feeling pins pressed using the finger projection (courtesy of Mr.
Shinohara, Human Science and Biomedical Engineering, AIST, Japan).
RIGHT: A computer mouse equipped with a small pin-array display (see enlarged
image in the circle). A user can feel information around the mouse cursor through
level-controlled pins (courtesy of Prof. Shimojo, The University of Electro-
Communications).
Comparing the Max. Exertable Forces of
Point-Contact Type Force Displays
1000
100
10
1
0.1 2 3 4 5 6
Degrees of freedom
Maximum exertable force (N)
6DoFCartesiantypedevice
2-dimensional shape manipulation system
Industrial Products Research Institute
(currently AIST)(JPN) 1988
National Institute of Bioscience and Human-Technology
ForceMASTER
FCS Robotics (HOL)
(The present AIST)(JPN)1994
PHANToM Premium 3.0/6DOF
SensAble Tech. (USA)
PHANToM 1.0
SensAble Tech. (USA)1995
SPIDAR-G
CyVerse (JPN)
Freedom 6S
MPB (CAN)
Cubic 3
MPB (CAN)
Tangible Mouse
Fuji Xerox (JPN) 1999
7
AIST TODAY 2005-Summe
6AIST TODAY 2005-Summer
7
AIST TODAY 2005-Summe
6AIST TODAY 2005-Summer
Research and development of olfactory displays
Ya s u y u k i Ya n a g i d a
Meijo University /
Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR)
Recently, researchers of the information-related technology
have come to join research and development work on olfactory
displays; new approaches are now being pursued in this fi eld. These
researchers aim at using smells as computer-controlled media, as
well as using olfactory displays as tools for aromatherapy or for
research on the sense of smell. Various trials are now underway,
for example, to use smells as an implicit information output from
computers, or to add an odor to the world of multi-media applications
and virtual reality (VR).
Among others, VR-or iented olfactory displays are actively
pursued in Japan. For example, a wearable olfactory display has
been developed at the University of Tokyo that can supply odors
to a person who walks around in a VR space. An arm-mounted
interactive olfactory display has been developed at Nara Institute of
Advanced Science and Technology, focusing on the behavior when a
person tries to pick up something to smell. In ATR, a scent projector,
which delivers the odor locally to the nose without requiring a user to
wear anythi ng on the face, has been developed.
These types of olfactory displays are capable of providing smells
synchronously with other interactive contents, so that they are
expected to stimulate p eople to fi nd a new way of using odors.
Scentprojector
Photo 2: Examples of "Force Display"
LEFT: Six degrees-of-freedom (DoF) Cartesian-type force
feedback device (National Institute of Bioscience and Human-
technology (currently AIST), 1994.) "DoF" indicates the number
of directions in which force can be rendered by the device. In the
three-dimensional world in where we live, six is the maximum DoF
(three each for parallel and rotation). The device is a point-contact
type force feedback device with six DoF with the largest exertable
force (see Figure).
Right Top: PHANToM Haptic Interface (SensAble Technologies,
Inc., U.S.A.) This is the most commercially successful device in
the world (point-contact type, 3 DoF), developed in the MIT AI
Laboratory in the early 1990's. With this device, you can touch a
virtual object with the tip of a stylus in your hand.
Right Bottom: GyroCube (AIST, Japan, 2001.) This is a torque
display of three DoF, developed as a portable direction pointer
(courtesy of Dr. Nakamura, Human Science and Biomedical
Engineering, and Prof. Fukui, University of Tsukuba).
create reaction forces through the armor), a
"point-cont act" type (making the user touch
a virtual object using the tip of a "tool" in
his hand; the "tool" is controlled to show a
reaction force to the user so that he can feel
the tip touching the object; Photo 2), and a
"torque" (a force that produces rotation or
torsion) display (Photo 2). Among these,
Systemconcept
the point-contact type has already been
commercialized (see Figure). Since the late
1990's , point-contact-type force displays
have been used as three-dimensional input/
output devices in computer-aided design
systems, virtual surgical simulators, and
rehabilitation systems.
At AIST, we conduct research into the
display of haptic information by measuring
and clarifying the haptic characteristics
of humans and the development of haptic
devices.
Nose detection
and tracking
Aiming at
the nose
Air cannon
Delivering
scents by
vortex rings Camera
Platform