Towards innovative methods for multimodal interactions with advanced media and serious gaming

可以与在线社交虚拟世界结合的一个新的互动维度是触觉。触觉是指与周围环境的手动交互，例如探索信息提取或操纵以修改环境。触觉的一个潜在应用是加强人际交流，以表达情感、意图或情感；例如握手，以及身体接触。因此，将触觉添加到社交虚拟世界中为参与者带来了几个好处和可能性。我们认为，触觉领域仍处于初级阶段。提案中讨论的挑战大多是该领域的热门研究课题，其中一些目前正在研究中。上述每一方面的进展在不久的将来肯定是可望取得的。随着触觉设备价格的下降，游戏行业将首先注意到并利用这项技术来补充他们的游戏机，从而创造出相对于竞争对手的显著优势。家庭康复申请肯定会随之而来。各国政府迫切希望降低医疗成本，因此将鼓励和资助此类实际应用的开发。此外，触觉技术无疑将在教育领域获得重要地位。新的教育方法依赖于视觉和听觉演示来向学生描述不直观的概念；触觉的结合只是这种趋势到新媒体的自然发展。

A new interaction dimension that can be incorporated with online social virtual worlds is the sense of touch, or haptics. Haptics refers to manual interactions with the ambient environment, such as exploration for information extraction or manipulation for modifying the environment. A potential application for haptics is to enhance interpersonal communication to express affection, intention or emotion; such as a handshake, and physical contact. Therefore, adding haptics to social virtual worlds brings several benefits and possibilities for the participants. We believe that the field of haptics is still in its infancy. Most of the challenges discussed in the proposal are hot research topics in this field, and some of them are currently being studied. Advances on each of these described fronts are certainly to be expected in the near future. As the prices of haptic devices drop, gaming industries will be the first ones to take notice and exploit the technology to complement their playing consoles, thereby creating a significant advantage over their competitors. Home rehabilitation applications will most certainly follow. Governments are desperate to reduce healthcare costs, so development of practical applications of this sort would be encouraged and funded. In addition, haptic technology will undoubtedly gain an important place in the education sector. New educational approaches rely on visual and auditory demonstrations to describe unintuitive concepts to students; the incorporation of the sense of touch is simply a natural progression of this trend to newer media.