Haptic Technology

[Prasanth]

With the technology advances in the past few years, computer technology is making its way to the general public at an affordable price.Such as a faster CPU, a larger hard drive, better graphic card, better multimedia system, and better computer tools.One of these computer technologies that are finding it’s way to the home and business PC market is the haptic technology.Haptics is "one of the growing areas in human computer interaction or new types of sensory interaction with computers besides keyboards and mice”.

The basic idea of haptic devices is to provide users with a force feedback information on the motion and/or force that they generate. Haptic devices are useful for tasks where visual information is not sufficient and may induce unacceptable manipulation errors, for example surgery or teleoperation in radioactive/chemical environments. The aim of haptic devices is to provide the user with a feeling of the situation. In this article we will try to review a particular type of haptic devices, namely those based on parallel mechanisms.

A haptic technology is a force or tactile feedback technology, which allows a user to touch, feel, manipulate, create, and/or alter simulated three-dimensional objects in a virtual environment. Such an interface could be used to train physical skills such as those jobs requiring specialized hand-held tools, for instance, surgeons, astronauts, and mechanics.Or to enable modeling of three dimensional objects without a physical medium such as automobile body designers working with clay models, to mock-up developmental prototypes directly from CAD databases rather than in a machine shop using virtual reality modeling language in conjunction with haptic technology.In addition, haptic help doctors to locate any change in temperature, or tumor in certain part of body without physically being there.

The term haptic is derived from the greek word ‘haphe’ which means pertaining to touch.

The scientific term "haptics" refers to sensing and manipulation through the sense of touch. Although the word haptics may be new to many users, chances are that they are already using haptic interfaces (for example, keyboard and mouse).