The Technion Touchlab focuses on haptics as an information channel, i.e., how touch and kinesthetics turn into knowledge and action in the environment. For example, what are the mechanisms that turn particular types of pressure on the fingertips into knowing that ’this is a fat-lump’ or ‘this is a smooth object’. We think of this aspect of haptics as haptic cognition. We take an interdisciplinary view of haptics, and integrate neuroscience, physics, cognition, psychophysics, engineering of interfaces, and philosophy of the mind-brain, to explore how haptics empowers humans in their interaction with the environment.
The active mode of haptics is of special interest to us: the hand acts both as a sensor and as an actuator. Through a cyclic process of collection of information about the environment, and immediate application to action, the hand finely adapts its action to the sensory cues perceived. This cyclic process is unique to the haptic sense only – the human visual, auditory, olfactory and taste sensory systems are passive. We investigate the ‘haptic exploration cycle’ in order to identify optimal modes of action, with applications to remote action. For instance we found that haptic cues convey information through a primitive haptic language. The hand-brain system links particular patterns with particular interpretations. This is not a one to one function, but rather a mapping function that links categories of patterns and categories of interpretations. A series of patterns convey information similar to a sequence of symbolic representations such as a sentence. We further found that when a contradiction across two representations occurs such as touching a rough object when a verbal title suggests it is smooth, human perception is slower and rate of errors is higher (see Stroop Interference and Facilitation Effects in Haptic Perception). This further suggests that haptics indeed has a semantic nature to it. One of our goals is to look at brain and cognitive aspects, as well as mathematical representations of the haptic signals, to further study the nature of haptic language and its applications.
It is well documented that based on a few primary cues the brain would perceive a full object. The Kanizsa triangle is a famous visual example (follow this link for the Kanizsa triangle and other gestalt examples). We are interested in exploring whether the same process of completion of sensory visual cues is applicable to haptic perception. What are the primary cues that are crucial and sufficient to generate a full haptic image of an object? (Review in progress)
Another major part of our work involves haptics and sensory integration. We ask questions such as what are the optimal sensory cues needed for the fastest human response? Our studies show that particular combinations of sensory cues trigger faster response compared to other sensory combinations (see, for example, Bi-&-Tri Modal Enhancement Also During Active Movements, Multi-sensory enhancement in conscious decision making tasks ,or Bi-&-Tri Modal study in Multi-Modal Virtual Environments: Response Times, Attention & Presence).
In the context of Presence we wish to intrigue and use the illusionary disposition of the mind. Specifically, we are interested in creating the illusion of touch. We use results from the literature on the Rubber Hand Illusion(RHI) to develop the Virtual Hand Illusion. The former illusion shows that humans project a sense of body ownership to rubber hands under particular stimuli (for more on this see Multisensory integration and feeling of body ownership of projected virtual hand). We plan to extend this to the Presence environment, in a way that users will be able to feel and manipulate objects with a virtual hand that is perceived as their own.
The context of our research on haptics is to investigate Presence. We are interested in how haptics contributes to the sense of Presence and how haptic cues are processed by the brain to generate a hypothesis about the environment. Since 2002 we have been funded by FET – Future emerging technologies (EU research funds). Please follow this link for more information on our project.
In the context of Presence we wish to intrigue and use the illusionary disposition of the mind. Specifically, we are interested in creating the illusion of touch. We use results from the literature on the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) to develop the Virtual Hand Illusion. The former illusion shows that humans project a sense of body ownership to rubber hands under particular stimuli (for more on this see Multisensory integration and feeling of body ownership of projected virtual hand). We plan to extend this to the Presence environment, in a way that users will be able to feel and manipulate objects with a virtual hand that is perceived as their own
See more in our site:
https://edu.technion.ac.il/haptech/index.html
