This proposal aims to further the understanding and applications of haptic playback, a paradigm for displaying both position and force data streams to the user, one through a haptic device and the other through a visual display. Both these data streams are crucial for sensorimotor skill acquisition. The PI will conduct user studies to develop a new model of a user during haptic playback to account for spatial tasks and adaptive mechanisms that humans use during haptic interaction. The model will be used to develop provably correct control schemes for implementing haptic playback. Furthermore, metrics will be identified to quantify the success of the training and propose controllers that improve these metrics. The PI will also explore how haptic playback can be used to supplement existing methods for soft tissue simulation by displaying force and position data recorded during interaction with real tissue. The PI will subsequently use these findings to develop a dental simulator for collaborative classroom use and a simulator to teach evaluation of jugular lymph nodes to medical professionals.
Haptic playback will have an impact in areas such as rehabilitation, where a patient is trying to learn a sensorimotor skill that has been affected by a disease or an injury, sports training, where an athlete is trying to learn the most efficient motion, or remote surgery, where medical services can be provided to rural communities. The ability to replace costly and complex virtual reality models with pre-recorded data could drastically shorten the time needed to develop such applications.
