Physically and perceptually based haptics

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Haptic technology aims at the artificial creation of the sensation of touching objects. By way of analogy, computer graphics aims at artificially creating the sensation of seeing objects. For example in the medical field, there are numerous instances where haptic technologies can contribute greatly. It can be used to teach and train, or to perform medicine remotely, and be applied to rehabilitation and therapy.  In manufacturing, haptic technologies are now applied to enable the assessment of products before physical mockups are made. One application which we will be pursuing is develop technology that will enable the blind and visually impaired access graphical information.The research to be carried out is aimed at the development of techniques that make it possible to build systems that can create haptic simulations having a great deal of realism. We will aim at expanding the techniques of haptic synthesis to create haptic signals that result from the dynamics of solid interaction (viscosity, plasticity, creep) since, to date, our techniques apply to quasi-static cases only. Another aim of the research will be the development of techniques that can provide cutaneous sensations which are similar to those arising when scanning surfaces, a specific example being reading Braille characters.In parallel, we will seek progress toward the development of a computational theory of haptic perception. We will consider the information that is available to recover the properties of the touched object and deduce the problems that must be solved by the brain to recover the relevant information. It will then be possible to pose the corresponding computational problems. From this,  predictions will be made and behavioral experiments will be designed to test them by systematic manipulation of the cues that participate in the solution of the original problem.