Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

The sense of touch is a complex experience, arising from sensory receptors in the skin together with information arising in the joint and muscle receptors. The rich sensory information is crucial to many aspects of our daily lives: it is how we explore our world, how we communicate, work and play. Haptics is a touch term that describes both cutaneous (tactile) and kinesthetic (body limb positions) information. Many robot-like devices currently exist which provide force-feedback to a single point, usually at the hand which interfaces the end effector of the robot. We are developing wearable haptic technology that can be worn as clothing such as gloves and belts and provides tactile feedback at mulitple contact points. We have used such technology to act as a means of communication that provides surigate visual information via artificial tactile actuation enhancements that are used to provide way-finding assistance for people who are blind. Refinement of this technology permitted us to discover an affordable, low power solution for providing force and texture information as well. We will use this technology to provide multiple contact tactile feedback to surgeons that perform robotic surgery. Without this tactile feedback, surgeons can inadvertently apply excessive force and injure the patient, thus negating the potential benefits of robotic surgery. Other applications of our technology include rehabilitation as well as tactile feedback for driver collision warning systems in automobiles. Our main objective is to mimic the richness of the human hand in providing tactile feedback via artificial methods. What we lack is a robotic arm that mimics the human arm so that we can objectively evaluate our technology as well as provide the requirements for what our technology is suppose to do. The application requests funding for such a robotic arm. The applicant lost access to a robotic arm when he moved from the University of Guelph to the University of Waterloo and the University of Guelph decided to keep the equipment.