Haptic perception – human beings’ active sense of touch – is the most complex of human sensory systems, and has taken on growing importance within varied scientific disciplines as well as in practical industrial fields. This book's international team of authors presents the most comprehensive collection of writings on the subject published to date and cover the results of research as well as practical applications. After an introduction to the theory and history of the field, subsequent chapters are dedicated to the neuro-physiological basics as well as the psychological and clinical neuro-psychological aspects of haptic perception.
Haptic perception – human beings’ active sense of touch – is the most complex of human sensory systems, and has taken on growing importance within varied scientific disciplines as well as in practical industrial fields. This book's international team of authors presents the most comprehensive collection of writings on the subject published to date and cover the results of research as well as practical applications. After an introduction to the theory and history of the field, subsequent chapters are dedicated to the neuro-physiological basics as well as the psychological and clinical neuro-psychological aspects of haptic perception.
Tele operation systems, in which robots are controlled remotely, are a potential solution to performing tasks in remote, small, and hazardous environments. However, there is a big disadvantage to these systems; as the direct connection between the human and the environment is lost and operators are deprived of their sense of touch. The recreation of touch feedback through haptic devices is a possible solution, however haptic devices are far from perfect and improving their design is usually a slow trial-and-error process. This book describes 7 scientific studies that try to break this slow loop by using a deductive approach. Through investigating fundamental properties of human haptic perception using psychophysical paradigms, general knowledge on haptic perception of force, position, movement and hardness was gained. The resulting information can be applied to many different haptic devices. Consequently haptic systems can be more easily designed in an intuitive, human-centered way.
The term “haptics” refers to the science of sensing and manipulation through touch. Multiple disciplines such as biomechanics, psychophysics, robotics, neuroscience, and software engineering converge to support haptics, and generally, haptic research is done by three communities: the robotics community, the human computer interface community, and the virtual reality community. This book is different from any other book that has looked at haptics. The authors treat haptics as a new medium rather than just a domain within one of the above areas. They describe human haptic perception and interfaces and present fundamentals in haptic rendering and modeling in virtual environments. Diverse software architectures for standalone and networked haptic systems are explained, and the authors demonstrate the vast application spectrum of this emerging technology along with its accompanying trends. The primary objective is to provide a comprehensive overview and a practical understanding of haptic technologies. An appreciation of the close relationship between the wide range of disciplines that constitute a haptic system is a key principle towards being able to build successful collaborative haptic environments. Structured as a reference to allow for fast accommodation of the issues concerned, this book is intended for researchers interested in studying touch and force feedback for use in technological multimedia systems in computer science, electrical engineering, or other related disciplines. With its novel approach, it paves the way for exploring research trends and challenges in such fields as interpersonal communication, games, or military applications.
The Cambridge Handbook of Applied Perception Research covers core areas of research in perception with an emphasis on its application to real-world environments. Topics include multisensory processing of information, time perception, sustained attention, and signal detection, as well as pedagogical issues surrounding the training of applied perception researchers. In addition to familiar topics, such as perceptual learning, the Handbook focuses on emerging areas of importance, such as human-robot coordination, haptic interfaces, and issues facing societies in the twenty-first century (such as terrorism and threat detection, medical errors, and the broader implications of automation). Organized into sections representing major areas of theoretical and practical importance for the application of perception psychology to human performance and the design and operation of human-technology interdependence, it also addresses the challenges to basic research, including the problem of quantifying information, defining cognitive resources, and theoretical advances in the nature of attention and perceptual processes.
The two-volume set LNCS 9774 and 9775 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference EuroHaptics 2016, held in London, UK, in July 2016. The 100 papers (36 oral presentations and 64 poster presentations) presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 162 submissions. These proceedings reflect the multidisciplinary nature of EuroHaptics and cover topics such as perception of hardness and softness; haptic devices; haptics and motor control; tactile cues; control of haptic interfaces; thermal perception; robotics and sensing; applications.
An accessible, nontechnical overview of active touch sensing, from sensory receptors in the skin to tactile surfaces on flat screen displays. Haptics, or haptic sensing, refers to the ability to identify and perceive objects through touch. This is active touch, involving exploration of an object with the hand rather than the passive sensing of a vibration or force on the skin. The development of new technologies, including prosthetic hands and tactile surfaces for flat screen displays, depends on our knowledge of haptics. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Lynette Jones offers an accessible overview of haptics, or active touch sensing, and its applications. Jones explains that haptics involves integrating information from touch and kinesthesia—that is, information both from sensors in the skin and from sensors in muscles, tendons, and joints. The challenge for technology is to reproduce in a virtual world some of the sensations associated with physical interactions with the environment. Jones maps the building blocks of the tactile system, the receptors in the skin and the skin itself, and how information is processed at this interface with the external world. She describes haptic perception, the processing of haptic information in the brain; haptic illusions, or distorted perceptions of objects and the body itself; tactile and haptic displays, from braille to robotic systems; tactile compensation for other sensory impairments; surface haptics, which creates virtual haptic effects on physical surfaces such as touch screens; and the development of robotic and prosthetic hands that mimic the properties of human hands.
"Sense of Touch and its Rendering" presents a unique and interdisciplinary approach highlighting the field of haptic research from a neuropsychological as well as a technological point of view. This edited book is the outcome of the TOUCH-HapSys European research project and provides an important contribution towards a new generation of high-fidelity haptic display technologies. The book is structured in two parts: A. Fundamental Psychophysical and Neuropsychological Research and B. Technology and Applications. The two parts are not however separated, and the many connections and synergies between the two complementary domains of research are highlighted in the text. The eleven chapters discuss the recent advances in the study of human haptic (kinaesthetic, tactile, temperature) and multimodal (visual, auditory, haptic) perception mechanisms. Besides the theoretical advancement, the contributions survey the state of the art in the field, report a number of practical applications to real systems, and discuss possible future developments.
The dominance of vision is so strong in sighted people that touch is sometimes considered as a minor perceptual modality. However, touch is a powerful tool which contributes significantly to our knowledge of space and objects. Its intensive use by blind persons allows them to reach the same levels of knowledge and cognition as their sighted peers.In this book, specialized researchers present the recent state of knowledge about the cognitive functioning of touch. After an analysis of the neurophysiology and neuropsychology of touch, exploratory manual behaviors, intramodal haptic (tactual-kinesthetic) abilities and cross-modal visual-tactual coordination are examined in infants, children and adults, and in non-human primates. These studies concern both sighted and blind persons in order to know whether early visual deprivation modifies the modes of processing space and objects. The last section is devoted to the technical devices favoring the school and social integration of the young blind: Braille reading, use of raised maps and drawings, sensory substitution displays, and new technologies of communication adapted for the blind. (Series B)
This book explains the mechanisms underpinning the tactile perception of electrovibration and lays the groundwork for delivering realistic haptic feedback on touchscreens via this method. Effective utilization of electrovibration can only be accomplished by simultaneously investigating both the physical and perceptual aspects of the finger-touchscreen interaction. Towards this goal, present work blends the available knowledge on electromechanical properties of the human finger and human tactile perception with the results of new psychophysical experiments and physical measurements. By following such an approach that combines both theoretical and experimental information, the study proposes new methods and insights on generating realistic haptic effects, such as textures and edges on these displays. Besides, state-of-the-art research on the field is reviewed, and future work is discussed. The presented interdisciplinary methods and insights can interest students, broad communities of haptics, neuroscience, engineering, physics, and cognitive sciences, as well as user-interaction experts and product designers from the industry.
