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Merlin John

When Sigourney Weaver donned her high-tech docker hardware suit for an epic fight to the death with her alien nemesis at the end of the movie Aliens, the film-makers created a convincing representation of a powerful robotic complement to human physical strength and capability. It’s one that relies on the successful implementation of haptic technology, the physical feedback that introduces human sensitivity to control techno-muscle.

While haptics is a term that brings rapture to sci-fi enthusiasts and computer gamers, it’s a technology that matures in fits and starts before emerging into everyday use in forms that are immediately recognisable – like add-ons for computer gaming, or gloves to control devices via 3D virtual reality software. But haptic technology is on its way and there are enough real-world applications for it to provide profitable business at the bleeding edge of high-tech advances. It is the potent key to realistic and useful implementations of 3D virtual experiences.

The term ‘haptic’ originates from the Greek word ‘haphe’ which relates to the sense of touch. According to Wikipedia, haptic technology “interfaces the user via the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations and/or motions to the user. This mechanical stimulation is used to create haptic virtual objects.”

Game players have no need for such dry definitions. They experience it as the resistance they experience from their driving controls when they are in the full throes of a Grand Prix, for example. The difficulty in turning the steering wheel at a tight corner is realistic enough to magnify the illusion of driving and maximise the game player’s engagement.

In the gaming context the resistance doesn’t have to be a precise analogy of reality because it is part of creating a powerful illusion, but in emerging ‘professional’ implementations, accuracy and precision are crucial. Medical institutions using the technology to train doctors want the most realistic simulations available, and toymakers ‘sculpting’ their latest creations to be output on a 3D printer have no time for What You See Isn’t What You Get.

A visit to the London premises of Inition, a six-year veteran of the world of 3D creativity (it’s a long time in this area), provides a dynamic and real-life introduction to the full range of virtual technology. Situated between the City and Hoxton, it’s an area teeming with creativity and innovation.

Inition’s basement demonstration area is a technology frontline full of the wow factor, literally in the case of the Philips 42-inch WOWvx ‘intelligent display’. This high definition screen converts 2D television programmes to 3D on the fly, and while the visuals are pretty spectacular, they are not as thought-provoking as some of the more intriguing haptic technologies available here as everyday products.

Director and 3D technology evangelist Stuart Cupit breaks haptic technology down into two areas: robust, established products that are regular purchases for organisations, including colleges, working in 3D modelling and creation; and extremely high-cost research developments for specialist areas like medicine and engineering.

Because 3D, and haptics in particular, are still emerging technologies there are relatively few manufacturers – Inition deals with four.

One of the most common hardware tools is the SensAble Phantom arm which is used for a demonstration program to manipulate an on-screen cube object in a ‘room’, moving the arm. The physical resistance allows you to trace the walls and floor of the room and the edges of the object. You can move the cube and flip it over, developing a real sense of its presence and weight. The experience intensifies as you put your virtual hand under the cube and lift it. The mechanical feedback gives an immediately recognisable sense of its weight, something which can be increased or decreased within the parameters of the software.

It is a useful warm-up for the next simulation, a demonstration developed to show doctors a non-cosmetic use of Botox. It can be injected into muscles to help treat conditions like spasms (it can kill the tissue at the source of the problem), and doctors are generally unfamiliar and wary of injections into muscle.

An on-screen view of a human head and bust, giving clear representation of muscle formation, allows you to use the haptic ‘pen’ on a robotic arm to manipulate a hypodermic needle into position, penetrate the skin and push into the tissue to deliver the collagen. While there is the usual initial awkwardness about manipulating the arm, the degree of the mental engagement is unnerving. It includes a difficult moment trying to put down the pen without unnecessarily ‘stabbing’ the ‘patient’. The association is surprising and unavoidable.

Also engaging is using the arm and a regular software program to ‘sculpt’ an on-screen ball of ‘plaster’. A palette of tools is available to do everything from a radical gouge to a fine smoothing. Set-ups like this are available at around £2,000 and are used by artists, toymakers and colleges (for example London Metropolitan University and the Royal College of Art) to create and then output 3D objects. With schools paying thousands of pounds for their CAD-CAM installations, this technology is now affordable.

So what gets a technology evangelist like Stuart Cupit excited? “We get really excited about bits of technology like the 3D printer, which I think has massive potential. Haptics is interesting but perhaps it still has a little way to go before it becomes something… where you’d say, ‘Wow, that’s going to change the world,’ although I’m sure the haptics manufacturers see it very differently.

“I think the sculpting tool is probably the first one where I have seen an application that uses the device and you think, actually that software really benefits from having haptics, and it makes it far more usable and far better than it was without it.

“All the other training applications have all been a little researchy and a little cutting edge and not really product yet. But they have got potential, like using a keyhole surgery tool and going into someone’s knee and removing a piece of cartilage - and you want to do that as a simulator so you don’t mess up so many people’s knees. To be able to have haptic feedback adds that extra element of realism that can only improve the training experience, so it has to be a good thing.”

One of the key obstacles is the cost of devices and the complexity of the software, which is why the sculpting tools, at around £2,000, are a breakthrough. The next step up takes you to a £30,000 price tag.

“Once you have written good software you have a tool that is easier to use than without a haptic device,” says Stuart. “Instead of touch and input you have touch and feedback too and that works across the board. Can you imagine playing a game without sound?

He feels the next breakthrough will be in games: “It will need the right hardware to come down in price and the right killer application to make it happen. You can imagine using haptics in Second Life. Reaching out and touching things would be a far more engaging experience than dragging things around with a mouse cursor. But nobody is going to do that if you have to pay £50,000 for a haptic glove. If Sony could release one with a future generation of the Xbox it would move things on…”

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Merlin John is an editor who created and ran The TES’ Online magazine. He is now freelance and works for publications including The Guardian, and runs his own web service at www.merlinjohnonline.net .

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