Haptic Assistance

Map Exploration Through Haptic Assistance

The blind perceive map information in relation to spatial displacement within an area as apposed to their acquisition of spatial knowledge (Tlauka and Wilson, 1996; Darken and Banker, 1998; Christou and Bülthoff, 2000). Early work by Jacobson (1998) illustrated the use of a combination of virtual reality and haptic devices in order to provide the blind with an audible and tangible interaction between themselves and the map, using the phantom haptic device as a white cane in the virtual world.’

Phantom Omni force-feedback

This is an off the shelf haptic device, which consists of a stylus mounted at the end of a robotic arm, capable of movements and resisting these movements on different pressure levels in all three dimensions. This device will act as the ‘white cane’ to the user in the virtual world. When the user grabs the end of the stylus, the forces delivered by the motors can be felt as a result of the motors being controlled by the computer program resulting movement restriction and opposing forces to create the haptic effect whilst interacting with the map.

3D Haptic Web Browser

The user is immersed into a 3d virtual representation of the web, which allows the user to navigate through the internet by touch, developed for the visually impaired.Using the Phantom device the user can explore the 3d virtual representation of the internet and interact with ‘hapgets’. As well as haptic interaction, the haptic web browser also incorporates a speech synthesis and speech recognition engines to allow interaction and feedback through speech as well as touch. All information concerning hapgets can be transformed into speech.

The most intriguing feature of the 3d haptic web browser would have to be the map exploration mode, which allows the visually impaired user to explore an interactive map. This technology is fully compatible with the google map system in which the 2d map is transformed into a 3d multimodal map (haptic and aural)

Using the Phantom device, the user can then explore the virtual 3d modular map in a similar manner as using a cane in the physical world. Upon exploring roads and junctions, the aural speech synthesis engine produces information about the street in the form of speech.

Limitations

Although the phantom omni force feedback device offers a whole new range of interaction methods between the visually impaired user and digital world, being visually impaired means perceiving the physical and digital world in a unique manner. Although the phantom device offers the user a form of a ‘digital cane’, the 3d virtual map integration isn’t yet detailed enough to provide the user with a first person perspective of walking through the streets of the routes planned out, but instead just allows the user to feel the direction of the route and hear the name of the streets as he/she follows the path.

The technology is very much in its infancy, but is only limited by the current virtual representations of the real world.

References

Jacobson, R. D. (1998) Navigating maps with little or no sight: An audio-tactile approach.

Proceedings of the Workshop on Content Visualization and Intermedia Representations (CVIR).Montreal.

Tlauka, M.; Brolese, A.; Pomeroy, D. and Hobbs, W. (2005) Gender differences in spatial knowledge acquired through simulated exploration of a virtual shopping centre. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25, 111-118

Darken, R. and Banker, W. (1998) Navigating in natural environments: A virtual environmenttraining transfer study. VRAIS98: Virtual Reality Annual Symposium, 98, 12-19