Past events

Research talk by Dr. Mandayam A. Srinivasan, Director, The Touch Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://touchlab.mit.edu
.

Date:12th December 2008,
Time: 12:00h
Place: Salon de Juntas, Edificio Ponent, 2do. Vagón, Planta 0

HAPTICS: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATIONS

The human haptic system with its tactile, kinesthetic, and motor capabilities together with the associated cognitive processes, presents a uniquely bi-directional information channel between our hands and brains, but is underutilized. Recent development of haptic technologies that enable a user to touch, feel, and manipulate virtual or remote objects, show promise in myriad applications such as education, entertainment, training, communication, healthcare, hazardous operations, design, manufacturing and marketing.
In this talk, I will describe the scientific and technological underpinnings of the emerging field of Haptics. I will give a brief overview of our recent advances in skin biomechanics, tactile neuroscience, human haptic perception, robotic hardware and real-time simulation software, all of which have helped establish Haptics as an exciting area of research. I will also cover our contributions to its applications such as virtual reality based simulators for training surgeons, real-time touch interactions between people across the internet and direct control of machines from brain neural signals.

Biographical sketch

Dr. Mandayam Srinivasan is Director of the MIT Touch Lab and Senior Scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. He has been recognized worldwide as an authority on haptic computation, cognition, and communication in humans and machines, particularly to enhance human-machine interactions in virtual environment systems. After receiving a Ph.D in Applied Mechanics from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yale University, he became a member of research faculty in the Department of Anesthesiology, Yale University School of Medicine, where he conducted research on mechanics and mechanisms of the primate sense of touch. He moved to MIT in 1987 and founded the Laboratory for Human and Machine Haptics. This "MIT Touch Lab" is now internationally recognized for its leadership in many aspects of haptics research.

Seminar organised in collaboration with Starlab

This talk is sponsored by the IMMERSENSE, PRESENCCIA and MIMICS projects

Research talk by Prof. Edwin Blake from the university of Cape Town, South Africa.

Date:4th July 2008,
Time: 12:30h
Place: IRI Seminar Room, Centro de Realidad Virtual de Barcelona - Parc Tecnològic de Barcelona - c/ Llorens i Artigas 4-6. 08028 Barcelona.

Title: Using Virtual Environments to Support People Living with HIV

Abstract:
South Africa's health sector has to cope with one of the world's highest HIV prevalence rates and novel Information Technology solutions can assist with support. Over the past four years we have iteratively developed prototype virtual environment applications (VEs) using an adapted user centred design method to provide emotional and informational support to people living with HIV. Our prototype VEs provided narratives of responses to HIV diagnoses, factual information related to the virus within the human blood stream, and nutritional information. They were tested in Cape Town, South Africa with semi-literate users in three separate studies. Despite the subjects' low computer literacy, the systems were found to be usable and empowering. A particular advantage of the VEs was the anonymity provided to the users, since many infected individuals are afraid of disclosing their HIV status, and so do not receive conventional support. It seems that the system will be a useful adjunct to peer support groups.

Research talk by Stephan Streuber (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)

Date:17th June 2008,
Time: 12:00h
Place: Powerwall Room, Centro de Realidad Virtual de Barcelona - Parc Tecnològic de Barcelona - c/ Llorens i Artigas 4-6. 08028 Barcelona.

Title: Studying Natural Human Interaction in Multi-User Virtual Environments

Abstract: Humans have an incredible ability to adapt their behavior in cooperative situations: whether it is playing a ping pong match, carrying a piano, or dancing a tango. Even though our ability to engage in joint actions and to coordinate our actions with those of others is fundamentally important in everyday life - the underlying processes are relatively unexplored. A common assumption is that joint action can not be sufficiently understood by studying perception, action, and higher-level cognitive processes of isolated individuals.
This leads to a critical aspect of joint action research: the lack of appropriate methods which allow for investigating natural human interactions under very controlled conditions. One chance to overcome
these issues might be the development of immersive collaborative virtual environments like described in this talk. Furthermore a first application of the system is presented: an explorative study, which
investigates the extent to which humans optimize their walking behavior while walking individually or
jointly connected - carrying a physical stretcher. These results might indicate the emergence of a joint body: a phenomenon in which two individual action-perception loops are tuned towards each other in order to optimize a common goal.