TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Despite their ubiquitous importance in human life, we currently lack a formal method for analyzing and understanding the feel of tool-mediated interactions with physical objects. Computer-controlled haptic interfaces have been developed to enable users to touch virtual environments through a stylus, but these renderings seldom feel like authentic re-creations of the richly textured and nuanced surfaces of real artifacts. As modern education, work, art, and entertainment become increasingly mediated by the digital domain, we need to ensure that these new virtual interactions can be as rich and immersive as the real world, an objective that requires compellingly realistic haptic feedback. Simultaneously, to remain competitive in the global economy, the United States needs to develop a diverse, societally engaged workforce of scientists, engineers, and well-prepared citizens. This career development plan describes the integrated set of core research and education initiatives that the PI will pursue over her five years as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The research objective of this proposal is to establish and refine the approach of haptography. Like photography in the visual domain, haptography enables an individual to quickly record the detailed feel of a real object and reproduce it later for others to experience. The primary hypothesis of this research is that the feel of tool-mediated contact with real and virtual objects is governed by the high-frequency accelerations that occur during the interaction, rather than the low-frequency impedance of the contact. The proposed research will culminate in a haptographic installation that will let individuals feel valuable objects through a unique haptic interface. The complementary educational objectives of this proposal are to elevate the appeal of engineering for young Philadelphia students and to expand and enrich the experience of current students in engineering.

Clarification of Codes