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Collaborative HapticsInvestigators: Roger Hubbold (PI), Steve Pettifer and Toby Howard Researchers: Mashhuda Glencross (RA), Caroline
Jay (PhD) During a visit to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000, Prof. Roger Hubbold undertook an initial experiment to simulate two users carrying a stretcher through a complex process plant. This prototype implementation used an eight-foot long force feedback arm (the Argonne Arm) together with a PHANTOM device to provide haptic feedback. Two independent users connected by a local area network were able to carry the stretcher and to experience forces applied by the other user. 
The collaborative haptics project continued this research theme together with the EVE Group led by Prof. Fred Brooks and Prof. Mary Whitton at UNC-CH. Specifically, the problem of two users collaborating over the Internet was studied. Very little is known about the effects of network lag and jitter on human task performance in collaborative virtual environments. On this project, we undertook a series of systematic experiments, to establish how much latency can be introduced before user performance degrades. We explored the effects of latency for a range of collaboration scenarios, in particular the extreme case where users concurrently manipulate the same object. A system was developed which manages consistency between peers while maintaining a fast local haptic response. The efficacy of our approach was validated for tasks involving shared haptic manipulation over typical transatlantic latencies. Our results demonstrate, through quantifiable measures, an operational system that enables effective haptic collaboration on real networks. The following images show two users performing a collaborative haptic assembly task. The one on the left was at at UNC-CH (USA) and the user on the right was located in Manchester (UK). A movie of a real transatlantic assembly task is available here (9.2M DivX file). 
The collaborative haptics project was funded by the EPSRC under grant GR/S23087/01 (May 2003 - April 2006). |
Related publications
Mashhuda Glencross, Caroline Jay, Jeff Feasel, Luv Kohli, Mary Whitton, and Roger Hubbold. Effective cooperative haptic interaction over the internet. In William Sherman, Ming Lin, and Anthony Steed, editors, IEEE Virtual Reality, pages 115-122, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 2007. IEEE Computer Society. ISBN: 1-4244-0905-5. [ .pdf ] Caroline Jay, Mashhuda Glencross, and Roger Hubbold. Modelling the effects of delayed haptic and visual feedback in a collaborative virtual environment. ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction (TOCHI), 14(2), 2007. [ .pdf ] J. Marsh, M. Glencross, S. Pettifer, and R. Hubbold. A network architecture supporting consistent rich behaviour in collaborative interactive applications. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 12(3):405-416, May 2006. [ .pdf ] M. Glencross, A. G. Chalmers, M. C. Lin, M. A. Otaduy, and D. Gutierrez. Exploiting perception in high-fidelity virtual environments. Siggraph Full-Day Course, Boston, August 2006. C. Jay and R. Hubbold. Quantifying the effects of latency on sensory feedback in distributed virtual environments. In Proceedings of Virtual Images Seminar 2006, pages 9-16, Jan 2006. College de France, Paris. [ .pdf ] M. Glencross and A. Chalmers. High fidelity collaborative virtual environments. Afrigraph Tutorial, January 2006. M. Glencross, M. Otaduy, and A. Chalmers. Interaction in distributed virtual environments. Eurographics Tutorial, August 2005. [ .pdf ] C. Jay and R. Hubbold. Delayed visual and haptic feedback in a reciprocal tapping task. In Proceedings of worldHaptics Conference 2005, pages 655-656. IEEE, Mar 2005. Pisa, Italy. [ .pdf ] M. Glencross and R. Hubbold. A framework for haptic rendering of large-scale virtual environments. In SIGGRAPH 2004 Sketches and Applications Programme, August 2004. Los Angeles, California. C. Jay and R. Hubbold. Does performance in the face of delayed sensory feedback change with practice? In Proceedings of Eurohaptics Conference 2004, pages 530-533. Springer-Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-9809614-1-9. [ .pdf ] R. J. Hubbold. Collaborative stretcher carrying: A case study. In Proceedings of 8th Eurographics Workshop on Virtual Environments, 2002. [ http ] R. J. Hubbold and M. Keates. Real-time simulation of a stretcher evacuation in a large-scale virtual environment. Computer Graphics Forum, 19:123-133, June 2000. ISSN 0167-7055. [ .html | .ps.gz ] |