Équipe Analyse/Synthèse

Invited lecturer: Christophe Ramstein Haptic Technologies Inc. - Canada

Christophe Ramstein presented a lecture on low cost haptic devices followed by a demonstration of "MouseCat" and "PenCat", two haptic devices from Haptic Technologies Inc.

After his PhD under C. Cadoz on the development of a gesture editor for the CORDIS/ANIMA system at ACROE, Ramstein moved to Canada where he spent four years as a researcher on interfaces for handicaped people. From 1996 on he has founded Haptic Technologies Inc., as an attempt to commercialize the results of his research projects.

The lecture by Mr. Ramstein was based mainly on the opportunities haptic devices offer for multimodal human-computer interaction. He pointed out that there's a lack of isomorphism in present-day computers, when considering the proportionality between the importance of human haptic senses and computer's haptic inputs.

Ramstein then presented a survey of haptic developments, where roughly in the 70s there has been speculation whereas in the 80s pure research has dominated and the first desktop devices were introduced mainly in the 90s. He forecasts that the next decade will present high-end applications followed by the advent of multimodal OS.

As for present-day market opportunities, Ramstein cited mainly: access to computers, 3D design, training (as for example for astronauts), medical tasks, games, artistic creation, robotics, among many others. He presented data showing that an haptic application can reduce up to 15 % the time to perform a task if compared to a normal application.

The second half of his talk was mainly based on a short description of the "Haptic (HTI's) Package" for Windows NT and 95, and the "MouseCat" - "PenCat" devices.

As for the HTI package, it consists of four items:

• Touch Kit - Application programming interface for development of high ad low level haptic applications;
• Touch Windows - Windows 95 multimodal user interface (every on-screen object possesses a force profile and an auditory signature);
• Solid Touch - a 3D CAD application;
• Tele Touch - for remote applications.

The "MouseCat" and "PenCat" devices have the following technical characteristics:

• Workspace: 125x75 mm;
• Peak force: 10 newton;
• Position resolution: 1500 dpi;
• AD/DA Conversion: 16 bit AD / 12 bit DA;
• Embedded 25 MHz Intel 386 microprocessor;
• Internal loop frequency: 800 Hz;
• Connection to the PC: RS 232 - data transfer freq. 100 Hz;
• Force calculation: Visco-elastic model.

After the talk, the attendees where invited for a hands-on demonstration, where they could test some applications running in two PCs, one connected to a MouseCat and the other to a PenCat.

To find more about

His speech to the GDGM, check out:

• the abstract of his presentation.
  

  haptic technology/devices or about Haptic Technologies' products, check out:

  
  

• The Gesture Research in Music page
  

• Vincent Hayward's homepage at McGill University
  

• Haptic Devices, a page containing all information you may want to find out on this subject.
  

• Haptic Technologies Inc.