New Technologies Bring Sense of Touch to Computers

Computers can produce beautiful images and create magnificent sounds, but simulating the sense of touch has been more difficult.

By KEN BROWN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

http://www.wsj.com

The growing field of technology known as haptics is changing that, slowly giving doctors new surgical tools, making videogames more realistic and helping drivers manipulate dials and knobs without taking their eyes off the road.

Haptics technology gives the illusion that "you are actually interacting with something that’s physical or real when it’s really just a computer," says Dean Chang, chief technology officer at Immersion Corp., one of the few public companies working with the technology.

A group of science museums is showing off one form of the technology. The system, dubbed the Internet Arm Wrestling Challenge, uses aluminum arms and hands connected by a series of rods and gears to computer servers linked to the Internet. Five museums, including the newly expanded New York Hall of Science in Queens, which helped develop the technology, and the Imaginarium in Anchorage, Alaska, have the same setups, allowing visitors to test their strength against opponents several time zones away.
[wrestle]
Wendy Brez arm wrestles an opponent over the Internet with an aluminum hand linked to a computer.

The arm-wrestling device — two tall blue boxes with stools in front and fake arms outstretched — sit in the new addition as part of an exhibition on networking. Visitors looking for a test of strength sit in front of a touch-screen monitor and ask the computer to look for a potential opponent at another museum. If one is available, his or her picture appears on the screen via streaming Internet video, the two wrestlers grip the metal hands and the computer starts the contest.

If an adversary at the Science Center of Iowa in Des Moines, for instance, attacks quickly by pushing the metal arm forward, then his opponent’s arm is pushed back. If the other player counterattacks, he can return to neutral. Participants can hear each other pant and watch as the other grinds his teeth over the Internet, but what’s lost is the sense of nose-to-nose combat when an opponent is across the table.

For safety reasons, the machine doesn’t exactly mimic real arm-wrestling matches, which are usually won with a sharp burst of power. "You can’t let it go wham because someone will break their arm on it," says Alan J. Friedman, the museum’s director.

Engineers have been experimenting with haptics ever since robotic arms were built to manipulate nuclear material during the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. But the technology behind haptics, derived from the Greek word meaning "to touch," has progressed slowly because it’s a complicated interaction of gears, motors, computer hardware and software combined to produce the sense of touch.

"You can display something visually without affecting it, but if you want to display something through touch you have to interact with it, so it makes it inherently more complex," says Allison Okamura, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University who oversees the haptics lab there.

Powerful computers have helped push the field forward in recent years, increasing the ability of machines to give the sensation of weight or pressure. (Software tells a machine to simulate pressure or resistance.) Now similar technology is being used for small hand-held devices. Early next year, Samsung Electronics Co. is planning to produce the first cellphone that vibrates in tune with popular ring tones.

Creating a sense of touch is crucial for many industries. "People who design cars and clothing really care how it feels when you touch it," says Blake Hannaford, a professor of electrical engineering and a specialist in haptics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Scientists dream of one day developing technology that lets Internet users "feel" a product, such as fabric, through the computer.

Ms. Okamura of Johns Hopkins and others are developing haptic devices to allow surgeons to feel, instead of just see, what’s going on inside the patient when they use robots to help them with delicate operations. Immersion sells a $10,000 training device that lets medical workers practice inserting needles, allowing them to feel what happens when they pierce the skin and enter a vein. Users hold a handle, shaped like a needle, just as they would a real one, and they feel the pressure of the needle as it’s pushed into the skin.

BMW AG is using another form of haptics technology in its 7 Series line of luxury cars. The driver can control the car’s climate, stereo, navigation and other systems using one knob. As the knob is turned, a computer-driven motor produces a "feel," for each system. The radio produces a feel of stations being clicked.

The Internet arm wrestling device developers at the museum and at Lynch Exhibits, a trade show display company, are seeking a patent and hope to get the machines in dozens more museums. (They hope to sell it for roughly $25,000 to museums or the general public.) For now they are watching how visitors interact with it. "It really brings out the competitive instinct in people," says Eric Siegel, the museum’s director of planning and program development and one of the machine’s creators. "We had one very big trustee who was very upset when he didn’t win."

The machine keeps a running tally of which museum has the most arm wrestling winners. And executives are having fun envisioning future contests. "The red states versus the blue states," Mr. Siegel suggests.

Write to Ken Brown at [email protected]

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