Haptics is quite a difficult thing to describe to people without actually getting them to try out a system. This video was created to aid a talk on telehaptics, with the intention of showing the relationship between a haptic device (in the real world) and a simulated tactile and graphic object (in a virtual world).
The device is a Novint Falcon and the simulation is a demo from Chai 3D. I filmed the falcon while running the simulation and took a screen capture of the whole thing. An artifact of this was the horizontal compression.
Of course, a video will never beat getting someone's hands on a real device, but it should help the explanation.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
Thursday, 9 December 2010
30 and 40 minute robot
I'm posting two stages at once because the photo upload tool on blogger was broken the other day. Anyway, here is the progress on the '10 minute robot'.
He now has a bracket mount for the tilt servo. I actually wasted 30 minutes trying to make this out of steel before realising that my lab's workshop hand-drill wasn't up to it. After giving up on that bit it only took 10 minutes to make this aluminium bracket out of scrap.
And here's a pan servo. Both degrees of freedom have been aligned with the sensor's center of rotation. Of course, mechanical offsets can be dealt with mathematically via trigonometry, but right now I wanted to solve this problem mechanically rather than in code.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
20 minute robot
Yesterday's '10 minute robot' with another 10 minutes work.
Now he's got pitch rotation instead of yaw. I've used an angle bracket to keep the center of rotation in-line with the center of the IR sensor (his eyes). It doens't look as cool as his original neck, but it's more functional in terms of sensing.
Beats reading web comics for procrastination!
Now he's got pitch rotation instead of yaw. I've used an angle bracket to keep the center of rotation in-line with the center of the IR sensor (his eyes). It doens't look as cool as his original neck, but it's more functional in terms of sensing.
Beats reading web comics for procrastination!
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
10 minute robot
I couldn't resist posting this little guy that I built in about 10 minutes today. A bit of creative procrastination away from the thesis.
It's almost a genuine robot as it consists of a sensor and an actuator, though an inability to manipulate it's environmet does exclude him from some definitions.
I'm not wiring up or programming him until the thesis is handed in!
It's almost a genuine robot as it consists of a sensor and an actuator, though an inability to manipulate it's environmet does exclude him from some definitions.
I'm not wiring up or programming him until the thesis is handed in!
Thursday, 11 November 2010
The Question in 'Philosophy Now'
I just found an article on The Question in the magazine Philosophy Now.
Here's a bit about the Lotus:
"Whilst the current haptic device, designed by humanoid technology engineer Adam Spiers, is a excellent step in the direction of delivering a similar theatrical experience to both blind and sighted participants, I have a sneaking suspicion that blind participants may have gained more from the experience than I."
This is an interesting point. On one hand the lack of light in the Question meant that sighted audience members were certainly deprvied of their primary navigational sense. On the other hand the familiarity of blind audience members with a lack of sight meant that the Lotus didn't always offer the same level of navigational benefits and encouragment as for sighted audience members.
The article was written by Sue Rolfe, who studied Philosophy under Martin Milligan. The plot of The Question was based on 'On Blindness' a book of letters between philosophers Bryan McGee and Martin Milligan, debating the nature of blindness with regard to one's experience and knowledge of the world.
The full Philosophy Now article is available here.
"Whilst the current haptic device, designed by humanoid technology engineer Adam Spiers, is a excellent step in the direction of delivering a similar theatrical experience to both blind and sighted participants, I have a sneaking suspicion that blind participants may have gained more from the experience than I."
This is an interesting point. On one hand the lack of light in the Question meant that sighted audience members were certainly deprvied of their primary navigational sense. On the other hand the familiarity of blind audience members with a lack of sight meant that the Lotus didn't always offer the same level of navigational benefits and encouragment as for sighted audience members.
The article was written by Sue Rolfe, who studied Philosophy under Martin Milligan. The plot of The Question was based on 'On Blindness' a book of letters between philosophers Bryan McGee and Martin Milligan, debating the nature of blindness with regard to one's experience and knowledge of the world.
The full Philosophy Now article is available here.
Haptic Lotus in the Guardian
The Question and the Haptic Lotus have been mentioned in today's Guardian newspaper G2 article titled:
'The player: videoless games can reveal skills we didn't know we had.
The Question and the iPhone game Papa Sangre can teach us things that video games can't'
In the article the journalist describes the Question (my collaboration with Extant) as her 'standout theatre experience of the year.' She also compares it with the audio only iPhone game Papa Sangre.
You can read the full article here.
'The player: videoless games can reveal skills we didn't know we had.
The Question and the iPhone game Papa Sangre can teach us things that video games can't'
In the article the journalist describes the Question (my collaboration with Extant) as her 'standout theatre experience of the year.' She also compares it with the audio only iPhone game Papa Sangre.
You can read the full article here.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Surgical Tele-Haptics Job
I've been very poor at updating this blog recently, mainly on account of the rush to get my a complete draft of my PhD thesis to my supervisor before starting work as a research associate at Bristol robotics laboratory.
From now on I'll be working a great deal with haptic technologies. Already I've been plesently surprised by the accessibility of haptics, with the Novint falcon haptics interface costing only £200 and being supported by the Chai 3D open source C++ libraries (including dynamics engines for both rigid and deformable bodies). Using only these two elements I've already got a fully enabled haptics suite that I can start my research with. This is in stark constrast to the 3 months I spent at the start of my PhD writing drivers to get my very expensive robot to move at all.
Of course, I'm still working on the PhD...
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| The Novint Falcon haptic inteface |
This new project is looking at integrating the sense of touch into robot assisted larposcopic (keyhole) surgery. So a surgeon who is remotely controlling a medical robot will be able to feel what is inside the patient that they are working on, rather than just relying on the images provided by an endoscope for diagnosis and surgery.
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| Chai 3D screenshot |
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