Haptics involves the modality of touch and the sensation of shape and texture an observer feels when virtually 'touching' an object. The USC Haptics and Virtual Environments Lab started haptic research on how to use desktop robotic devices (PHANToM) to allow museum visitors to explore works of art by touching them, something that is not possible in ordinary museums due to prevailing 'hands-off' policies. We are also interested in applications of haptics in medical training and rehabilitation for post-stroke patients, visualization for the blind and visually impaired, mutual touch over the Internet using PHANToM and CyberGrasp, and utilizing logged positional and pressure data from user haptic input for user-state sensing.

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Researcher exploring the surface of a virtual teapot with the PHANToM.

Researcher calibrating the CyberGrasp