Touch the feeling
The human being interacts with the external world through senses. Mechanical, thermal and chemical excitations of biological sensors are translated into useful information concerning the environment. Much of this information is obtained thanks to the sense of touch. A haptic interface is a device, which allows a user to interact with a computer by receiving tactile feedback. This man-machine interface reproduces as truly as possible the tactile parameters, such as texture, roughness, temperature and shape. These devices are used in several applications starting from computer games to surgical simulations and remote operation of robotics in hazardous environments. In the framework of the European research project MUVII (Multi User Virtual Interactive Interface), prototype software was developed which allows the interrogation of 3D objects and the experience of the feedback through the sense of touch using tactile motors. The computable properties of the objects, such as curvature or smoothness, can be translated into tactile feedback patterns defined by the user. The necessary computations can be sped up enormously with the use of a PC's graphics software as a computational resource. The prototype software allows the feeling of objects and their properties through the fingertips in virtual reality, in addition to seeing them. This fact opens amazing possibilities for applications in the medical field, for vision-impaired and blind people, or the computer games industry. Opportunities of exploitation of the technology arise in every virtual environment where perception possibilities are augmented from the relation to digital objects by getting haptic (touch) feedback.
