Haptic Technologies

Technologies of touch and the human-computer interface (HCI)

VTi's CyberGrasp™ glove (above) with exoskeleton for added force feedback as well as vibrotactile stimulation

Embarking on an archaeology of the technologies of touch, in an article for Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (Paterson 2006) I have examined the history of haptic devices from telerobotics to the PHANToM™ desktop interface [Personal HAptic iNTerface Mechanism], and discuss tactile bodysuits and gloves, resulting in a narrative of the genesis of ‘presence’ and ‘immersion’ through various haptic technologies.

Furthermore, in a forthcoming article for Space and Culture (Paterson, forthcoming) I explore ideas of robot skin and the human-robot interface, and pursue various ideas of so-called 'social presence'.

Looking at the role of technology in touch, where the synaesthetic basis of everyday perception is mediated through the use of interfaces and technological prostheses. For the idea of touch in technology is one that seems at last to be coming of age. Haptics, or the technologies of touch, is “one of the growth areas in human computer interaction or new types of sensory interaction with computers” (Steve Furner of BT, interview 8/9/00). While the concept of multimedia has been trumpeted for years, usually that has equated only with vision and sound. With smell devices in prototype form at MIT, it is haptics that is emerging as the next aspect of multimedia (Kramer in Hodges 1998; Furner 8/9/00). Haptics is, according to Salisbury (1995) “the newest technology to arrive in the world of computer interface devices.”

After many years of over-emphasis on the visual elements of computing for example, in PCs and videogame consoles, the other senses are beginning to become important. As processor speed and memory size increases dramatically in PCs especially, the “gap between capability and usability” of the computer is vast, in the words of Massie, co-inventor of the PHANToM haptic interface (in Mahoney 2000). Haptic technologies are making an appearance in high-end workstations for computer-aided design (CAD) as well as at the lower end, on home PCs and consoles, to augment the human-computer interface (HCI). Effectively this means adding a “new mechanical channel,” or a further strand, to human-computer communication so that data can be accessed and literally manipulated not just through visual means (Hayward in Hodges 1998). Whereas the keyboard is a passive mechanical channel between the computer and user, haptics enables a more active exploration, is programmable according to the type of data or object to be manipulated, and allows the user not just to see three dimensional shapes on the screen visually but also to feel them and mould them through the haptic interface.

The Logitech iFeel™ mouse (above)

Echoing Gibson's (1968) distinction between passive and active touch, co-inventor of the PHANToM Kenneth Salisbury observes: “Unlike our other sensory modalities, haptics relies on action to stimulate perception… to sense the shape of a cup we do not take a simple tactile snapshot and go away and think about what we felt. Rather, we grasp and manipulate the object, running our fingers across its shape and surfaces in order to build a mental image of a cup” (in Hodges 1998). This is as true in the virtual world as in the real world, and so to get a true sense of touch in a virtual world through a haptic interface, the manipulation of the object must occur over time, in a synthetic world still with spatial and sensory continuity, so that tactile memory flows over time to build up a complex dynamic haptic image of the object under examination. This is easiest when the haptic is collocated with the visual and the auditory, so that interactions confirm each other for the user.

The SensAble PHANToM haptic device at BT Labs with the ‘thimble-gimbal’ (above)

This convergence is one that enables an augmentation for the user of the interface not just in the purely tactile realm but as a set of augmentations that begins to play with an emerging multisensory realm, one that talks often of ‘immersion’. This story is not therefore a straightforward history of tactile technologies, but an ‘archaeology’ (pace Foucault, especially 1994) of how the concept of multisensory immersion becomes an issue and begins to become explicitly articulated in the language.

It is some measure of the recent importance of haptic technologies that they are being incorporated into the hardware and software architectures of videogame consoles, perhaps the cheapest and most accessible forms of technological immersion currently available.

Foucault M (1994) The Order Of Things: An Archaeology Of The Human Sciences (Vintage: New York)

Hodges M (1998) 'It Just Feels Right' in Computer Graphics World, Vol. 21, No. 10

Mahoney D P (2000) 'Innovative interfaces' in Computer Graphics World, Vol. 23, No. 2

Paterson, M. (2006) 'Feel the Presence: The Technologies of Touch', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(5), pp. 691-708

Paterson, M. (In Preparation) 'Electric snakes and mechanical ladders? Social presence, domestic spaces, and human-robot interactions', Space and Culture

Salisbury K (1995) 'Haptics: The Technology of Touch' at http://www.sensable.com/haptics/haptwhpp.htm