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 UB Reporter: Technology transmits sense of touch over Web

University at Buffalo - Reporter
Volume 34, Number 30

Thursday, June 19, 2003

Technology transmits sense of touch over Web

Breakthrough by UB engineers could lead to technology that teaches users
how surgeon uses scalpel

By JOHN DELLA CONTRADA
Contributing Editor

Engineers in the Virtual Reality Laboratory at UB have developed a new
technology that transmits the sensation of touch over the Internet.

The breakthrough could lead to creation of haptic technologies that
convey the sense of touch and would teach users how to master skills and
activities-such
as surgery, sculpture, playing the drums or even golf-that require the
precise application of "touch" and movement, says Thenkurussi Kesavadas,
director
of the Virtual Reality Lab and associate professor of mechanical and
aerospace engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

"As far as we know, our technology is the only way a person can
communicate to another person the sense of touch he feels when he does
something," says
Kesavadas. "We have added an important dimension to communication of
touch sensations."

Though the technology is still a long way from being able to capture and
communicate the complex feel of a perfect golf swing, Kesavadas and his
fellow
researchers have used it successfully to transmit from one person to
another over the Internet the sensation of touching a soft or hard
object, and the
ability to feel the contour of particular shapes.

The researchers call their technology "sympathetic haptics," which means
"having the ability to feel what another person feels," Kesavadas notes.
The technology
communicates what another person is feeling through an active-tracking
haptics system linked between two personal computers.

The system uses a virtual-reality data glove to capture the hardness or
softness of an object being felt by one person. This feeling is
communicated instantaneously
to another person seated at a computer terminal who, using a sensing
tool, follows a point on the computer screen that tracks and transmits
the movements
and sensations of what the first person is feeling. The sensations are
transmitted in the form of exerted force and through information about
the position
of the objects being touched.

"When the person receiving the sensation matches the movements of the
person feeling the object, he not only understands how the person moved
his hand,
but at the same time he feels exactly the kind of forces the other
person is feeling," Kesavadas explains.

He notes that the sensation of touch is the brain's most effective
learning mechanism-more effective than seeing or hearing-which is why
the new technology
holds so much promise as a teaching tool.

"You could watch Tiger Woods play golf all day long and not be able to
make the kind of shots he makes, but if you were able to feel the exact
pressure
he puts on the club when he putts, you could learn to be a better
putter," Kesavadas says.

He and his co-researchers are interested especially in medical
applications for the technology. They are pursuing ways to communicate
to medical students
the exact pressure employed by an expert surgeon as he or she cuts
tissue with a scalpel. And they think the technology could one day be
used for medical
diagnosis-allowing a doctor to feel a human organ via the Internet,
checking the organ for injury or disease.

They also are investigating the technology's use for manufacturing
applications that involve touch and pressure, such as polishing or
grinding.

Another benefit of the technology, according to Kesavadas, is its
ability to capture for future replay and continual instruction the
sensation of an activity
after it's been transmitted.

"It almost would be like one-on-one training," Kesavadas says. "You
could replay it over and over again. Hospitals could use it to deliver
physical-therapy
sessions to patients, for example."

According to Kesavadas, the sympathetic haptics method is better suited
for transmission of touch than are other haptic technologies that employ
"master-slave"
or "collaborative" techniques. These other methods can help guide
another person's movements-when tracing the shape of an object, for
example-or can enable
two people to complete a simple task together over the Internet, such as
"lifting" an object cooperatively. But they do not truly transmit the
sensation
of touch, he says.

"With the other technologies, you're being forced to feel what the other
person is doing, but you're not actually feeling what the other person
is feeling,"
Kesavadas explains. "If I hold your hand and force you to write, for
example, you'd feel the sensation of being dragged around, but you
wouldn't feel the
sensation of actually writing.

"You can't teach something to somebody by forcing their movements," he
adds. "With our technology, you can do and feel, which leads to
learning. That's
a crucial difference."

Kesavadas and co-researcher Dhananjay Joshi, a mechanical engineering
graduate student, will present the results of their research at a fall
meeting of
the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and R&D Expo in
Washington, D.C.

C 2003, University at Buffalo. All rights reserved.


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