Robotics  

A new robot, developed at Disney has been demonstrated, and shows a precise and fluid movement, nearly perfectly echoing the gestures of a remote operator. 'Jimmy,' as the robot is called, suggests applications such as telepresence and education, but the overall impression could have much broader implications in light of how closely we will be working with robots in the future.

Disney Research roboticists have developed hybrid hydrostatic transmission systems for a human-safe haptic telepresence robot prototype called 'Jimmy.'

According to the researchers, Jimmy's mechanical system uses a hybrid air-water configuration, analogous to N+1 cable-tendon transmissions, using N hydraulic lines and 1 pneumatic line for a system with N degrees of freedom (DOFs).

The common air-filled line preloads all DOFs in the system, allowing bidirectional operation of every joint. This configuration achieves the high stiffness of a water-filled transmission with half the number of bulky hydraulic lines.

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Unlike motors or servos, Jimmy's systems don't have to place complex motor assemblies inside the robot’s arms. This means the overall system can be smaller and lighter, which also means it will generally be safer for close human contact..

The new actuators were used to build a humanoid robot with two 4-DOF arms, connected via the hydrostatic transmission to an identical master.

Stereo cameras mounted on a 2-DOF servo-controlled neck stream live video to the operator’s head-mounted display, which in turn sends the real-time attitude of the operator’s head to the neck servos in the robot.

"The ability to be swift yet delicate . . . enabled by an ultralight and ultralow friction robot arm will allow for manipulation strategies that embrace contact with the environment, rather than a traditional vision-only approach."

The operator is visually immersed in the robot’s physical workspace, and through the bilateral coupling of the low-impedance hydrostatic transmission, directly feels interaction forces between the robot and external environment. "We qualitatively assessed the performance of this system for remote object manipulation and use as a platform to safely study physical human-robot interaction," state the researchers.

As the video below shows, the hydraulic robot offers incredibly smooth and fast motion, while maintaining backdrivability and bidirectional force reflection, allowing safe interaction with people, and the handling of delicate objects.

John P. Whitney, who led the development of the robot told IEEE Spectrum, "The ability to be swift yet delicate, and the natural sense of environmental “proprioception” enabled by an ultralight and ultralow friction robot arm will allow for manipulation strategies that embrace contact with the environment, rather than a traditional vision-only approach that must carefully avoid any unintended contacts."

As robots move out of factories, and into our homes and offices, this level of compliance and haptics will be essential.

SOURCE  Disney Research, IEEE Spectrum

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 Interfaces  

Google's Project Soli is a new interaction technology that uses radar sensors that can accurately track sub-millimeter motions at high speed. It fits onto a chip, can be produced at scale and built into small devices and everyday objects.

Google’s Project Soli could make touching your Gorilla Glass wrapped device seem like using a rotary dial telephone does to us today. With the ability to track minute hand and and finger movements, all in a tiny sensor, Soli seems ideal for interacting with the plethora of ever-smaller devices and screens.

"The hand can both embody a virtual tool, and it can also be acting on that virtual tool at the same time."

Based on the video below, from Google Advanced Technologies Products (ATAP) group, the technology could be even more accurate and minutely precise than Leap Motion's system.

"The hand can both embody a virtual tool, and it can also be acting on that virtual tool at the same time," says Project Soli Design Lead, Carsten Schwesig.

Soli allows users to control devices using natural hand motions, including incredibly fine motions accurately and precisely.  Because it is a radar device, the sensor can even work through materials like a table or cloth.

Haptic feedback is also part of the interaction, with your hand naturally touching itself. Soli uses your hand as its own user interface for gesture like turning a knob, or scrolling between your thumb and forefinger on an invisible, virtual device.

"Radar gas some unique properties when compared to cameras for example," says Emre Karagozler, a hardware engineer with Project Soli. "It has very high positional accuracy, which means that you can sense the tiniest motions."

Soli may be ideal for small devices, like smartwatches and other wearables, especially since it works through surfaces and at a distance.

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A key development of making Soli was the push to make the hardware smaller and faster

The tiny interaction sensor runs at 60GHz and can capture motions of your fingers at resolutions and speeds that haven’t been possible before—up to 10,000 frames per second. To get there, the team had to reinterpret traditional radar, which bounces a signal from an object and provides a single return ping.

To capture the complexity of hand movements at close range, Soli illuminates the whole hand with a broad radar beam, and estimates the hand configuration by analyzing changes in the returned signal over time.

Soli is being targeted for broad availability soon, in a form factor suitable for incorporation into wearable devices like smartwatches. By the end of this year your next smartphone could have this new interface technology.




SOURCE  TechCrunch

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 Human-Computer Interation  

Human emotion can be transferred by technology that stimulates different parts of the hand without making physical contact with your body, according to a new study.

Human emotion can be transferred by technology that stimulates different parts of the hand without making physical contact with your body, a University of Sussex-led study has shown.

Sussex scientist Dr. Marianna Obrist, Lecturer at the Department of Informatics, has pinpointed how next-generation technologies can stimulate different areas of the hand to convey feelings of, for example, happiness, sadness, excitement or fear.

For example, short, sharp bursts of air to the area around the thumb, index finger and middle part of the palm generate excitement, whereas sad feelings are created by slow and moderate stimulation of the outer palm and the area around the ‘pinky’ finger.

The findings, which will be presented at the CHI 2015 conference in South Korea, provide “huge potential” for new innovations in human communication, according to Dr Obrist.

According to Obrist, "Imagine a couple that has just had a fight before going to work. While she is in a meeting she receives a gentle sensation transmitted through her bracelet on the right part of her hand moving into the middle of the palm. That sensation comforts her and indicates that her partner is not angry anymore.

“These sensations were generated in our experiment using the Ultrahaptics system.

“A similar technology could be used between parent and baby, or to enrich audio-visual communication in long-distance relationships.

“It also has huge potential for ‘one-to-many’ communication – for example, dancers at a club could raise their hands to receive haptic stimulation that enhances feelings of excitement and stability.”

Using the Ultrahaptics system – which enables creating sensations of touch through air to stimulate different parts of the hand – one group of participants in the study was asked to create patterns to describe the emotions evoked by five separate images: calm scenery with trees, white-water rafting, a graveyard, a car on fire, and a wall clock. The participants were able to manipulate the position, direction, frequency, intensity and duration of the stimulations.

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A second group then selected the stimulations created by the first group that they felt best described the emotions evoked by the images. They chose the best two for each image, making a total of 10.

Finally, a third group experienced all 10 selected stimulations while viewing each image in turn and rated how well each stimulation described the emotion evoked by each image.

The third group gave significantly higher ratings to stimulations when they were presented together with the image they were intended for, proving that the emotional meaning had been successfully communicated between the first and third groups.

Now Obrist has been awarded £1 million by the European Research Council for a five-year project to expand the research into taste and smell, as well as touch.

The SenseX project will aim to provide a multisensory framework for inventors and innovators to design richer technological experiences.

Obrist said, “Relatively soon, we may be able to realise truly compelling and multi-faceted media experiences, such as 9-dimensional TV, or computer games that evoke emotions through taste.

“Longer term, we will be exploring how multi-sensory experiences can benefit people with sensory impairments, including those that are widely neglected in Human-Computer Interaction research, such as a taste disorder.”



SOURCE  University of Sussex

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 Interfaces  

Working with ultrasound, researchers have developed a new method of haptic feedback. The approach lets users feel invisible holograms in mid-air.

You wont have to imagine what it would be like to touch a priceless artifact in a musuem, or a character from a video game, or your in-progress CAD file, or an organ scanned from your own body in the future.  Researchers have developed a prototype method for creating three-dimensional haptic shapes in mid-air using focused ultrasound. The potential applications for the technology are nearly limitless, and will help define how we interact with digital media in a few years.

Unlike another method that used puffs of air, the approach applies the principles of acoustic radiation force, whereby the non-linear effects of sound produce forces on the skin which are strong enough to generate tactile sensations.

This mid-air haptic feedback eliminates the need for any attachment of actuators or contact with physical devices.

The user perceives a discernible haptic shape when the corresponding acoustic interference pattern is generated above a precisely controlled two-dimensional phased array of ultrasound transducers.

"Touchable holograms, immersive virtual reality that you can feel and complex touchable controls in free space, are all possible ways of using this system."

The research published in ACM Transactions on Graphics, was led by Dr Ben Long and colleagues Professor Sriram Subramanian, Sue Ann Seah and Tom Carter from the University of Bristol’s Department of Computer Science, could change the way 3D shapes are used.  The new technology could enable surgeons to explore a CT scan by enabling them to feel a disease, such as a tumor, or bones from an X-, using haptic feedback.

The method uses ultrasound, which is focused onto hands above the device and that can be felt. By focusing complex patterns of ultrasound, the air disturbances can be felt as floating 3D shapes.

To demonstrate the effect of the system visually, the researchers have demonstrated the ultrasound patterns by directing the device at a thin layer of oil so that the depressions in the surface can be seen as spots when lit by a lamp.

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The system generates an invisible 3D shape that can be added to 3D displays to create something that can be seen and felt. The research team have also shown that users can match a picture of a 3D shape to the shape created by the system.

Long, said, “Touchable holograms, immersive virtual reality that you can feel and complex touchable controls in free space, are all possible ways of using this system.

“In the future, people could feel holograms of objects that would not otherwise be touchable, such as feeling the differences between materials in a CT scan or understanding the shapes of artefacts in a museum.”


SOURCE  University of Bristol

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 Computer Interfaces  

Prototype 'ultrahaptic' technology developed at the University of Bristol allows users to feel when they control their computers with mid-air hand movements.

Researchers at the University of Bristol have demonstrated a mid-air tactile feedback prototype system that allows people to interact with computer interfaces by touching invisible fields in the air above them while performing gestures.

UltraHaptics allows people interacting with a screen to feel what is displayed and also receive invisible information before touching it.

The technology works through the use of acoustic radiation force, projected through ultrasonic transducers. These emit very high frequency sound waves which when they meet mid-air, create a sensation on a person's skin.

By combining several waves, the researchers were able to create multiple points of tactile feedback with different properties that can be distinguished by users.

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One of the researchers working on the UltraHaptics project, PhD student Tom Carter, said current multi-touch systems with integrated interactive surfaces allow users to use them with their bare hands, but people cannot feel what is on the screen.

The researchers aimed to build in haptic feedback into existing interactive surfaces without sacrificing their ease of use and accessibility.

"To achieve this, we have designed a system with an ultrasound transducer array positioned beneath an acoustically transparent display," Carter said.  The team also used a Leap Motion sensor to capture the user's hand motions and position.

"This arrangement allows the projection of focused ultrasound through the interactive surface and directly onto the users' bare hands. By creating multiple simultaneous feedback points, and giving them individual tactile properties, users can receive localized feedback associated to their actions."



SOURCE  The Guardian

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 Main Label  

The SIGGRAPH Technical Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2013 brings together thousands of computer graphics professionals to share and discuss their work.

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The SIGGRAPH 2013 Technical Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The 40th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, 21-25 July 2013 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, received submissions from around the globe and features high quality and never before seen scholarly work. Submitters are held to extremely high standards in order to qualify.

“Computer Graphics is a dynamic and ever-changing field in many ways,” says Marc Alexa, SIGGRAPH 2013 Technical Papers Chair from Technische Universität Berlin. “The range of ground-breaking papers presented at SIGGRAPH is getting broader every year, now also encompassing 3D printing, and fabricating realistic materials as well as generating ever more realistic images of complex phenomena.”

SIGGRAPH accepted 115 technical papers (out of 480 submissions) to showcase this year representing an acceptance rate of 24 percent (one percent higher than 2012). The selected papers were chosen by a distinguished committee of academia and industry experts.

This year's Technical Papers program also includes conference presentations for 37 papers published this year in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG).

Highlights From the SIGGRAPH 2013 Technical Papers Program this year include:

OpenFab: A Programmable Pipeline for Multi-Material Fabrication

Authors: Kiril Vidimce, Szu-Po Wang, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley and Wojciech Matusik, Massachusetts Institute of Technology CSAIL

This paper proposes a programmable pipeline, inspired by RenderMan, for synthesis of multi-material 3D printed objects. The pipeline introduces user-programmable fablets, a corollary to procedural shaders for 3D printing, and is designed to stream over arbitrary numbers of voxels with a fixed and controllable memory footprint.

Opacity Optimization for 3D Line Fields

Authors: Tobias Günther, Christian Roessl, and Holger Theisel, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg

For visualizing dense line fields, this method selects lines by view-dependent opacity optimizations and applies them to real-time free navigation in flow data, medical imaging, physics, and computer graphics.

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AIREAL: Interactive Tactile Experiences in Free Air

Authors: Rajinder Sodhi, University of Illinois; Ivan Poupyrev, Matthew Glisson, Ali Israr, Disney Research, The Walt Disney Company

AIREAL is a tactile feedback device that delivers effective and expressive tactile sensations in free air, without requiring the user to wear a physical device. Combined with interactive graphics and applications, AIREAL enables users to feel virtual objects, experience free-air textures and receive haptic feedback with free-space gestures.

Bi-Scale Appearance Fabrication

Authors: Yanxiang Lan, Tsinghua University; Yue Dong, Microsoft Research Asia; Fabio Pellacini, Sapienza Universita’ Di Roma, Dartmouth College; Xin Tong, Microsoft Research Asia

A system for fabricating surfaces with desired spatially varying reflectance, including anisotropic ones, and local shading frames.

Map-Based Exploration of Intrinsic Shape Differences and Variability

Authors: Raif Rustamov, Stanford University; Maks Ovsjanikov, École Polytechnique; Omri Azencot, Mirela Ben-Chen, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology; Frederic Chazal, INRIA Saclay - Île-de-France; and Leonidas Guibas, Stanford University

A novel formulation of shape differences, aimed at providing detailed information about the location and nature of the differences or distortions between the shapes being compared. This difference operator is much more informative than a scalar similarity score, so it is useful in applications requiring more refined shape comparisons.

Highly Adaptive Liquid Simulations on Tetrahedral Meshes

Authors: Ryoichi Ando, Kyushu University; Nils Thuerey, ScanlineVFX GmbH; and Chris Wojtan, Institute of Science and Technology Austria

This new method for efficiently simulating fluid simulations with extreme amounts of spatial adaptivity combines several key components to produce a simulation algorithm that is capable of creating animations at high effective resolutions while avoiding common pitfalls like inaccurate boundary conditions and inefficient computation.

SIGGRAPH 2013 will bring thousands of computer graphics and interactive technology professionals from five continents to Anaheim, California for the industry's most respected technical and creative programs focusing on research, science, art, animation, music, gaming, interactivity, education, and the web from Sunday, 21 July through Thursday, 25 July 2013 at the Anaheim Convention Center. SIGGRAPH 2013 includes a three-day exhibition of products and services from the computer graphics and interactive marketplace from 23-25 July 2013.

More details are available at SIGGRAPH 2013 or on Facebook and Twitter.



SOURCE  SIGGRAPH 2013

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