VR & AR HAPTIC TECHNOLOGY
is we can feel it and therefore we
know it’s there and that’s what we’re
trying to achieve with our technology
“Is it exactly the same as real life?
No. But is it enough to create the
learning experience? Yes. And that’s
the difference.
“What haptics do is lift the
cognitive load, to make it easier for
people to learn because you’ve got
more than one sensory experience
going on. They accelerate the learning
speed because, again, you’re learning
through different behaviours, not just
theoretical observation. You’re doing
it.”
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Good vibrations?
Despite his “primitive” description
of the haptic response technologies,
when it comes to touch sensation,
Stone said that there is a place for
certain haptic systems in non-mission
critical situations.
He pointed to the use of
piezoelectric transducers built into
a joystick that vibrates to give the
user some form of touch sensation
as a good application of haptic
technologies.
“One of the best haptic feedback
systems I’ve ever used for a robot,
was developed by L3Harris over in the
US for bomb disposal.
“They used a joystick to develop a
haptic feedback controller and we put
a power tool onto the end of the robot
with a rotating piece of sandpaper to
strip stuff away.
“Using this hand controller platform
and a multi axis platform we were able
to strip the plastic sheath of a wire
remotely without sanding or burning
through the actual wire itself. You
couldn’t have done that with a glove or
any of these other techniques for that
application.”
Fenger said that approaches by
companies to incorporate haptic
feedback seemed to follow two
routes, a precise system that mimics
real interaction or ditching such
complicated systems in favour of
feedback designed to notify the user
of their surroundings. These systems
are similar to those outlined by
Stone in which “rumblings in an Xbox
controller” signalled changes.
“Most VR headsets give different
versions of vibrations as feedback.
That’s kind of a more interesting way
to go, because you learn to accept
a certain type or speed or rumble as
another kind of haptic feedback,”
said Fenger. “So basically, it will be a
suspension of disbelief. You accept
the tools are different when you are
inside of the VR helmet and you
accept you touched something when
you get a slight rumble.”
When it comes to the realistic
haptic feedback, Vincent accepts that
his FundamentalVR solution is not
quite the finished product. The aim is
to get to be as realistic as cadaveric
training but he pointed out that the
price and convenience comparison
weighed heavily with technology.
As for the use of VR and haptics
in surgery a lot has been made in the
run up to the release of 5G networks
of remote surgeries and using new,
faster signals to conduct operations
from a different room, hospital,
country or even continent.
Vincent warns that such systems
still have issues to address and there
are questions as to whether it is the
right technology.
“I’m not sure why you’d want to
go there with VR because you really
want AR rather than VR. You’d want
to enhance the view rather than
necessarily replace it.
“But the biggest issue is the
weakest link, which is the latency
issue because there is the possibility
that the moment you’re just about to
sever an artery and try and stitch it up,
that you get that one millisecond blip
in the signal. That could, quite literally,
be terminal.
“We’ve had a number of
conversations with manufacturers
of surgical robots around how some
of our haptic intelligence could be
used in live robot activity. We’ve not
deployed any of that yet, but that’s
certainly an area of interest with the
people who are specialising in that
production.”
“Where we
seek to get our
technology
to is to create
haptics, which
give the sensory
clue that you
need to change
your behaviour
in the surgical
procedure.”
Richard Vincent
18 25 February 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk
/www.newelectronics.co.uk