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Tan, Hong |
Mathematical/Computational
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School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
465 Northwestern Avenue |
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West Lafayette |
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IN 47907 USA |
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Why I Work on Haptic Interfaces
Of the five major human senses of vision, audition, taction (touch and proprioception), olfaction and gustation, only the first three have been engaged in most human-machine interface research. Of these three, a disproportional majority of work has been conducted on visual and auditory systems. Historically, work on tactile displays have been motivated by the desire to develop sensory-substitution systems for the visually or hearing impaired. The importance of vision and audition is implied by the need to replace them with other sensory modalities when they cease to function well. The existence of a more or less intact tactual sensory system is often taken for granted.
One way to appreciate our tactual sensory system is to consider what happens if it is impaired. Although clinical occurrences of such cases are rare (how many of us have ever met a deafferented person?), deafferented individuals suffer serious consequences from loss of peripheral organs (due to lack of protective sensory inputs) to being completely wheelchair bound. After all, the skin is the largest organ on the human body. Without its proper functions, we cannot gracefully perform even the simplest task of picking up an object. This last point is demonstrated by the fact that in the absence of any contact sensors, visually guided robotic fingers either crush or drop delicate objects such as glasses or eggs.
It is time that we develop human-machine interfaces that engage our sense of touch, and build robots and objects with "touchy feelings". |
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