Researchers transmit sense of touch, feel fine

The world got a little smaller Tuesday after
scientists reached around the globe via the
Internet and touched.

By Chris O’Brien
Mercury News

Or rather, the scientists — in London, Boston and
Los Angeles — picked up a virtual cube on a
computer screen at the same time and pushed it
around. The scientists, holding robotic arms, could
feel the force being exerted by the others as well
as the texture of the cube.

Though computers have been able to transmit
such sensations in close quarters for several
years, the distance between the scientists was a
new milestone that they hope will eventually lead
to new collaborative applications in telemedicine,
education and art.

“I think the most important applications are the ones we don’t know yet,” said Mandayam Srinivasan,
director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Touch Lab and leader of the MIT team that developed
the technology. “When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he didn’t see all the possibilities.”

The breakthrough actually occurred in May and was detailed in a paper presented Oct. 9 in Portugal at the
conference called Presence 2002: The 5th Annual International Workshop on Presence. Tuesday marked the
first public demonstration.

By adding a sense of touch, researchers hope to improve the experience of various virtual environments,
which are usually limited to sight and sound. The field of research involving touch is referred to as “haptics.”

There were three demonstrations Tuesday. The first occurred between labs at MIT and the University College
London. Later, links were established between the University of Southern California and MIT and with the
London school. Each team’s computer had a robotic arm with a stylus at the end. On the computer screen was
a blue box. A researcher wrapped a finger around the stylus to move a cursor on the screen. When the cursor
hit the box, which is programmed to “feel” like hard rubber, the software transmits signals through the arm
that vary the amount of tension felt.

When the cursor controlled by the second team touches the box, it changes the level of tension felt by the first
team. As each team experienced different levels of resistance, participants moved the cursors around the box
and together lifted it up and moved it across the screen.

The robotic arm and the software have been commercially available for several years. But the teams altered
the software so the program could be used across the Internet. Despite the breakthrough, researchers said
they were well aware of the limitations.

The arms have to be moved very slowly because the transmission of signals across the Internet can often be
slow and jumpy. Srinivasan said researchers will be focused on improving the network performance, the
processing speed of the computers and the software to fine-tune their work.

“As the software becomes more sophisticated and computers become faster, we can have widespread virtual
environments where we interact more naturally,” Srinivasan said.

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