We propose a haptic touch panel, which enables a user to perceive unified visual and haptic sensation of pushing an elastic object by finger. While a user touches and pushes an elastic object, a contact area between a fingertip and the object changes in correspondence with a force to push. The proposed display presented stiffness by controlling both contact area and force. The contact area was controlled by changing tension of transparent elastic rubber upon the panel. The result of experiments showed that the developed system enabled to change contact area by controlling the rubber's tension and to present different stiffed objects.

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You don't usually care about your own heartbeats, unless you are in a specific situation such as when getting nervous or injured. In the workshop your heartbeats are externalized with a concise system, which is composed of a vibration speaker and stethoscope. Heartbeat sounds taken by the stethoscope are sent to the vibration speaker via information processing circuit, and the system enables you to hear and touch states of your own heartbeats, and to exchange them with others. This workshop is aimed to provide a gut feeling of living self. The current paper describes the concept of workshop, and reports the participants' comments.

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Tactile feedback of the quantified shape feature according the tactual exploration with an interface is required. Electrotactile display fits together with an input interface because of its small and simple stimulator. The level of the self-similarity is one of the quantified shape features of an object. In order to present a self-similar object, the electrotactile display which can control the sensation of the skin indentation is required. In this study, we proposed the representation of the skin indentation by modulating with pulse rate of the uni-stimulus to present self-similarity of an object. To calculate the stimulus according to the tactual tracing of an arbitrary surface, the simplified skin indentation is estimated and modulated by the pulse rate. Furthermore, the developed electrotactile mouse had an anode and a ground electrodes to present the stimulus at a fingertip during the manipulation. The relationship between pulse rate and the sensory intensity of the skin indentation and the discrimination of the dimension of the self-similarity were examined. The results indicated that electrotactile pulse rate modulation of the skin indentation was effective below the pulse rate 100pps, and users could discriminate the level of the self-similarity.

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To present multimodal sensation, both kinesthetic and cutaneous sensation are important in haptic feedback. However, previous systems in multimodal haptic feedback required some different type of haptic and tactile devices, making the calculation and control of the stimuli difficult. In this study, we proposed a medium control haptic device which is a simple haptic device to present tactile and haptic multimodal sensation. We focused on the property of the dilatant fluid which is made from water and starch and developed the device which controls the physical property of the fluid by sucking or ejecting water through the filter. The quantitative evaluation suggested that the developed device could present multimodal sensation, including "stickiness", "hardness", "roughness" sensations.

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This paper presents a work carried out for a project to develop a new interactive technique that combines haptic sensation with computer graphics. The project has two goals. The first one is to provide users with a spatially continuous surface on which they can effectively touch an image using any part of their bare hand, including the palm. The second is to present visual and haptic sensation simultaneously by using a single device that doesn't oblige the users to wear any equipment. In order to achieve these goals, we have developed balloon array volumetric haptic display named Volflex. The Volflex, however, has small range of displayed volume. In this paper, we focus on expanding the ability to present varied shape of virtual object from flat surface to volumetric surface. We designed a new volumetric haptic display named Volflex+. It is composed of a group of air balloons controlled by air cylinders. Each air cylinder is attached to a linear actuator so that each balloon is able to move up/down. This configuration drastically expands presented volume..

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This paper discusses the directional properties of human hand force perception during maintained arm posture. A series of perception experiments is carried out for normal volunteers depending on the magnitude and direction of force stimuli provided from an impedance-controlled robot under the different arm postures, in which a subject manipulates the handle of the robot according to the visual feedback display and perceives a force stimulus for the specified direction. Experimental results demonstrate that human hand force perception is much affected by the stimulus direction and can be expressed with an ellipse in all arm postures. Focusing on the directional property of human hand force perception, the relationship between hand force perception and hand force manipulability is then analyzed by means of human force manipulability ellipse.

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This article describes research directions in the structure of perceptual/tactile dimensions of material textures. We introduce methods of psychological experiments and mathematical approaches for structuring tactile dimensions and summarize such dimensions revealed in previous studies. Furthermore, we discuss the dimensions from the points of view of sensory receptors. Holistically, we suggest that the material textures are composed of at least 5 perceptual dimensions, that are macro and fine roughness, hardness/softness, coldness/warmness, and friction (moistness/dryness, stickiness/slipperiness).

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Some teleoperation systems provide a reaction force to the operator in order to improve the maneuverability of the systems and almost all these systems simultaneously present visual information such as camera vision. As for the visual information, it is well-known that the color gives us psychological influence. It is said that the impression of the hardness is changed by lightness of color; we feel the light color objects soft and dark color objects hard. If color actually influences the human ability of perceiving force, then the perception of reaction force may change according to the brightness or contrast of the visual information. Therefore, we investigate whether the perception of force changes according to the parameters of object color. In this study, a haptic device, PHANToM Omni, is used for displaying reaction force when touching the object constructed in a virtual space. In the experiments, it was confirmed that the hardness of objects with low-value color tend to be perceived higher.

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This paper proposes accurate haptic computational methods for SPIDAR-tablet. Recently, tablet PCs equipped with a touch panel interface has become widely used. This study developed SPIDAR-tablet that combined SPIDAR-mouse with tablet PC. SPIDAR-tablet can add haptics to an intuitive operation with fingertip. We propose a method to correct spatial distortion of haptics, that didn't consider in SPIDAR-mouse. As a result, we came to be able to present an accurate haptics on fingertip.

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We performed psychophysical experiments to investigate the relationship between judgments of comfort on tactile materials and phonemes of onomatopoeias used for describing the sensations. In our experiments, participants rated comfort of tactile materials, and described the materials using Japanese onomatopoeias. The results indicated that there are unique associations between the judgments of comfort and the phonemes of the onomatopoeias in touch.

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In this paper, we propose a novel method for characterizing a target object by haptic information in order to prevent oversight of the target in visual search task. To verify the effect of it, we conducted an experiment to compare our method with a conventional visual highlighting of a target word in a visual word search task. The results show that the search time of our method was significantly shorter than the time of the conventional method. We therefore confirm the effect of the haptic information to prevent the oversight.

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Ungrounded and light-weight force display is demanded for the daily use of a virtual reality system in a large space. The concern with a pseudo-force display, which displays limited or different physical stimuli compared with the reaction forces causing in real-world, has been growing as a solution for the last several years. This paper reports a research trend of pseudo-force displays for production of physical stimuli to fingers or a palm. We categorize the pseudo-force display according to the approach to induce similar sensation or event cognition to those in real-world. The problems derived from the features of the pseudo-force display are also discussed.

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We propose a thermal measurement method using thermo sensitive ink and a CCD camera to realize the vision-based cutaneous sensor that can measure both tactile and thermal information. The thermo sensitive ink is employed to measure temperatures of the sensor surface on the basis of its color, which changes according to its temperature. The proposed method can be implemented in a simple structure so that we can integrate it with the finger-shaped GelForce technology that measures tactile information in terms of surface traction field. We implemented prototype sensors and confirmed that the proposed method can measure difference in temperature or material of objects based on the time response of measured temperature.

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We propose a method to transmit tactile information from one person to another using nail-mounted tactile display. Our proposed method conveys tactile information that is obtained by detecting the vibration on the nail of a sender when tracing a texture, and generates a vibration on the nail of a receiver to re-create the tactile perception while the subject tracing on a flat surface. In this paper, we reported about measuring method of tactile information, control method of actuator and developing a new actuator in order to share tactile perceptions with two people.

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The paper studies two methods of haptic. One is an attraction force display that can induce attraction force by a cyclic movement of a weight with asymmetric acceleration. Another is a texture display that induces a sensation of texture by giving off vibration while a subject traces a finger over a flat surface. In this paper, we propose a novel design that can induce both attraction force and texture feeling. The prototype consists of four vibration motors, which are controlled to generate asymmetric acceleration and vibration. The device is evaluated by experiments.

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This paper proposes a cylindrical multi-touch interface that enables teleoperation of robotic hand based on the force vector on each finger. The cylindrical interface measures the operator's grasping information as force vectors, and this information is reflected to movement of robotic fingers. This approach enables to make a compact and easy-to-use telexistence system for non-professional people. In this paper, the authors describe a design approach of the cylindrical interface and implementation of the prototype system. The evaluations of the cylindrical interface indicate that the interface could be used for teleoperation of a robotic hand.

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The hand fingerpad is one of the sensitive parts in human body. It can detect the surface features such as bumps and holes very quickly. However, the algorithm how we recognize such surface features in the brain has not been well studied. This study investigates human surface form recognition in terms of both psychological shape recognition performance for surface features and mechanical deformation produced by surface features. We utilized the finite element model of fingerpad which mimics the anatomical structure of finger tissue, and calculated the mechanical deformation in contacting indented or raised surface. We analyzed the deformation pattern in terms of the strain energy density in the locations where Merkel cells are typically observed. By comparing previous study on the human surface form recognition performance in fingerpad, we propose tactile recognition algorithm for identifying whether the surface form is raised or indented. The outcome of this research is not only valuable for comprehending the tactile recognition algorithm in human, but also insightful for developing tactile sensors which enables to detect surface form features.

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Control issues on haptic device control for virtual prototyping of power window switches are presented. A one degree-of-freedom haptic device was designed to display a virtual switch. The difference in the mass of a real switch and that of the haptic device was the main cause of the difference in the operational feeling. Dynamic equivalent mass was reduced by assisting the operational force. Hysteresis was also incorporated in the force-stroke curve. Sensory evaluation has verified that these control methods have enhanced the reality of the operational feelings of the virtual switch.

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This paper describes development of a wire driven multi finger haptic interface SPIDAR-MF. It is operated with five finger in one hand and it displays force to each finger. Multi finger device can operate more instinctively in virtual world. For such an interface, it is important to display force promptly and operate device. The SPIDAR system is effective to display force promptly, but it has big problem that strings are twisted by multi finger movement. we challenged to solve this problem by moving the frame where motor is fixed. The device can realize force feedback of reality and operate interactively.

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Robot Tile is one of the circulating field types of Locomotion interface which consists of five Omni-directional moveable robots. The user can keep walking in any direction with this device while it is in the place. An immersive projection display named the Rear Dome consists of a spherical rear projection screen and eight projectors. The Rear Dome can project omnidirectional images on the screen. A user can see the omnidirectional image inside the screen. We integrated the Robot Tile and the Rear Dome, and conducted the evaluation experiment.

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In this paper, we propose an ungrounded pen-shaped kinesthetic display that exerts force on a user's fingers without restricting hand movements in order to support sketching in virtual environments. To make this device compact and to satisfactorily represent the sensation of touching virtual objects with a pen, we have devised a method to exert forces on the user's fingers by moving the grip of the device toward the base fixed to the user's hand. We have implemented the device and verified its ability to exert force. We have also constructed a 3D haptic interaction system, whereby the user can see and touch virtual objects by using a haptic device. The system also allows the user to create tangible 3D shapes by sketching 2D figures on a virtual canvas with force feedback.

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In this paper, we propose a novel substantial display named "Shaboned Display" with bubble films. This system is composed of an array of bubble vents. On each vent, bubbles expand and contract continuously. By utilizing them as pixels, this system can display concrete images or simple animations. In addition, it can detect explosions of bubble films with an electrical approach and utilize them as an input. Thus, this system makes various art expression including accidental changes in the ambient surrounding. Furthermore, the pixels made of fragile bubbles would fascinate and encourage us to touch interaction. This time, we describe the system design and its applications.

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This paper proposes a computationally-efficient calculation method for simulating mass-spring model (MSM), by using both online-remesh deformation model and parallel computation by GPU. To compute the simulation and online remesh of MSM efficiently on GPU, we propose an extended data structure that consists of a connection array, a node list and a mass list. The simulation of MSM is efficiently performed on GPU, by using fast coalesced memory access. The online remesh process is efficiently performed on GPU, by using the feature of relocatability of the connection array. Computation time of MSM by using proposed approach (GPU and online-remesh) was 30 times faster than by using CPU. Interaction force computed by using GPU was more stable than by using CPU.

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Touch is a unique modality with regard to its spatial representation. Peripheral receptors are distributed throughout the entire body, and body parts can flexibly move relative to one another. Therefore tactile space can be defined at least in two spatial representations: those before and after the integration of the cutaneous information with the body posture information. Although human can choose either of the spatial representations to perform tactile tasks, the relationship between the spatial representations and judged attributes has not been discussed systematically. Here we review psychophysical findings that provided insights into how the cutaneous and proprioceptive sensations are integrated according to tactile tasks.

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We defined the approval requirements and established the design method for information architecture "Plural digital archives" that supplemented existing digital archives' weak point. A digital archive that urges multipronged, overall understanding about archived event can be achieved by this design method. And more, we produced an implementation example "Nagasaki Archive" and verified the validity of the design method through the analysis of behavior and comments of users and the access log of the website.

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This paper proposes a three-dimensional cardiovascular model construction system. With the system, medical doctors can interactively construct patient-specific cardiovascular models from echocardiographic images. For the construction of cardiovascular models with diverse and complex congenital heart illness, the system proposes a set of algorithms and interface that enable editing of the shape and topology of the three-dimensional models. In order to facilitate interactivity during the construction of the cardiovascular models, centerline and radius are added to the surface of the heart vessels. This forms a skeleton where the centerlines of blood vessel serve as the nodes and edges, while the radius of the blood vessel is given as an attribute value to each node. Moreover, parent-child relationships are given to each skeleton. They are expressed as the directed acyclic graph, where the skeletons are viewed as graph nodes and the connecting points are graph edges. The results of cardiovascular model construction using real patient data confirmed that the developed technique is capable of constructing cardiovascular models in a tolerable timeframe. Thus, it is suitable for practical use. Moreover, it is successful in representing the important structures of the patient-specific heart vessels for better understanding of the congenital heart disease. Therefore, the developed system enables well representation to the congenital heart disease, which is diagnosed by medical doctors through echocardiography.

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There have been various approaches to enhance physical performances by adding visuals and/or audios according to the motions of performers. However, these methods were too simple to explain the performers' will of their body expression. Furthermore, they did not consider to exceed the physical limitation of body expression, such as providing the sense of faster movement of arms by changing colors in costumes dynamically. We propose a new LED performance system to expand the expression capability of human body. We can create new generation performances by combining body expression and lighting effects.

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