Mechanical intelligence in haptic interfacing with digital worlds

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Humans traditionally exchange information and communicate with their physical environment via their five senses: hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste. Haptic interaction generally refers to the sense of touch. Today, physical environments are replaced with digital representations in an increasing number of applications. Haptic interaction generally requires the transmission of direct physical contact, e.g. forces or tactile sensation. This usually relies on instrumented mechanical devices to serve as haptic interfaces between the human and the digital world. In this project we will particularly focus on interactions where the direct transmission of force from a digital representation to the human is the main element. Application of such systems is rapidly increasing in many areas of industry and everyday life. Examples include hand-based interactions with virtual environments represented via dynamic simulations, such as training simulators, virtual prototyping environments, and rehabilitation systems. For such displays the main challenge stems from the interfacing of the digital environment and the haptic mechanism operated by the human user. The core innovation of the proposed project is the use of mechanical intelligence to overcome fundamental challenges in the development of these systems, and advance the technology to a level of unprecedented, high performance that can lead to breakthrough applications. The work directly falls into the Information and Communication Technologies strategic area and the Human Interaction with Digital Information topic and will bring key strategic benefits to Canada in these areas. This project also has relevance in other strategic areas, as the use of virtual environments and prototyping is steadily increasing in manufacturing and in the natural resources and energy industry. A significant number of highly qualified personnel will be trained in the project, and acquire skills that are highly desired in industry. Training will take place at the graduate, undergraduate and postdoctoral levels. This project will prepare the trainees for work in a broad range of industries including simulation and virtual environments, robotics and haptics, mechanical design and analysis, and control engineering.