Haptic Input Device Research Articles

Making Sense

BMW’s Z9 study car combines a haptic input device, on the console, with a display screen. With the long-range problem in view, BMW began speaking to the engineers at Immersion about the possibility of designing a mouse for the car. The target vehicle would be the 2001 7 series. An actual computer mouse in a car is one of those products that probably would cause a crash. According to an expert, strength of the mechatronics discipline is its notion of multivariable optimization, the idea of trying to solve the problem in the right place. Although the medical trainers for which Immersion provides tactile feedback look similar when seen from Schena’s favorite zoomed-out perspective, up close they are fundamentally distinct.

Current and future applications of virtual reality for medicine

Virtual reality is just emerging as an accepted scientific discipline for medicine. The majority of near-term applications are in the area of surgical planning, interoperative navigation, and surgical simulations. Its use in rehabilitative medicine and psychiatry has made significant progress. The immediate future holds promise for virtual endoscopy, which may replace standard endoscopic procedures for diagnostic screening. Viewing of these virtual images may be with head-mounted displays or true suspended holograms. The most highly developed area is in surgical simulations. Current generations are approaching photorealistic representation of the anatomy, while measurement science is providing physical tissue properties and physiologic parameters. The types of simulations range from "needle-based" procedures, such as standard intravenous insertion, central venous placement catheter, and chest-tube insertion to more sophisticated simulations of full surgical procedures like laparoscopic cholecystectomy or hysteroscopic resection of interuterine myoma. In addition, haptic input devices are providing the sense of touch to the procedures. Soon there will be patient-specific models derived from computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging scans that will permit a surgeon to practice a delicate surgical procedure on the patient's specific virtual anatomy before actually performing the procedure on the patient.

An advanced haptic system for improving man-machine interfaces

The continuing emergence of virtual reality (VR) for training, industrial and entertainment applications increases the need for highly capable haptic interfaces into these VR environments. For certain subsets of tasks in these application areas, existing methods for interfacing haptic devices to VR applications suffice. However, for operators performing manual control tasks, many of the pre-existing methods lack key capabilities that allow them to be employed for a variety of application areas with a variety of haptic input devices. The paper describes a newly developed method that overcomes these short-comings by integrating the core technologies of force feedback, reality registration and virtual fixtures to achieve significant operator performance improvements.