SBIR Phase I: Enabling Natural Tactile Interaction Across the Internet

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是能够创造新的消费产品，包括触觉指尖传感和触觉指尖显示，从而弥合数字鸿沟，对社会产生积极影响。其中一个应用程序是触摸式内容共享，它可以让用户下载和感受大多数人无法接触到的物体，比如月球上的石头或新生的狮子幼崽。设想的技术还将通过实现更丰富的电子商务体验对消费者产生直接的影响，买家不仅可以看到而且可以触摸他们计划购买的东西。其他可能的商业影响是改善游戏和虚拟现实系统，将人际触摸通信添加到视频聊天应用程序中，以及捕获和分析工业应用的表面特性，如远程材料表征和产品检测。 该项目还将提供关于如何使用现有消费电子元件来实现下一代计算机界面和可穿戴触觉设备的见解，这些设备可以使人类手指不受阻碍地使用。这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在实现两个人之间跨时间和距离的高质量触觉通信，本质上是为了能够感受到另一个人在跨越数字鸿沟触摸什么。研究小组将解决以下基本问题：（1）如何记录指尖在触摸各种表面时的感觉;（2）如何令人信服地复制这些不同的触觉，让另一个人感受到。该项目的智力价值在于强大的研究团队和对下一代触觉技术的关注，这些技术联合收割机几种不同的触觉输入数据类型和输出方式，而不仅仅是单一的感觉类型。 这项工作的具体贡献将包括设计一个可穿戴的发送单元，准确地捕捉与真实的物体表面的自然的基于触摸的交互的宽带体验，并设计一个固定的接收单元，在另一个人的指尖重新创建这些感觉。确定这种方法的有效性将改善社会？的方式，人类处理某些类型的触觉信号的理解，并将推进人类触觉互动的科学知识。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to enable the creation of new consumer products that incorporate tactile fingertip sensing and tactile fingertip display, thereby bridging the digital divide and having a positive impact on society. One application is touch-enabled content sharing, which will let users download and feel objects that are beyond the reach of most people, such as a stone from the moon or a newborn lion cub. The envisioned technology will also have immediate relevance for consumers by enabling a richer e-commerce experience, where buyers not only see but also can touch what they plan to purchase. Other likely commercial impacts are to improve gaming and virtual reality systems, to add interpersonal touch communication to video chat applications, and to capture and analyze surface properties for industrial applications such as remote materials characterization and product inspection. This project will also provide insights on how currently available consumer electronic components can be used to enable next-generation computer interfaces and wearable tactile devices that enable unhindered use of the human finger.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to enable high quality tactile communication between two human beings across time and distance, essentially to make it possible to feel what another person is touching across the digital divide. The research team will address the essential questions of (1) how to record what the fingertip feels when touching a broad range of surfaces and (2) how to convincingly replicate these diverse tactile sensations for another individual to feel. The intellectual merit of this project lies with the strong research team and the focus on next generation haptic technologies that combine several different tactile input data types and output modalities, rather than just a single sensation type. Specific contributions of this work will include the design of a wearable sending unit that accurately captures the broad-bandwidth experience of natural touch-based interactions with real object surfaces and the design of a stationary receiving unit that re-creates these sensations at the fingertip of another person. Determining the efficacy of this approach will improve society?s understanding of the way in which humans process certain types of tactile signals and will advance scientific knowledge of human tactile interactions.