Drawing on Air With Haptics in 3D

Roland Piquepaille writes "In a recent article, PhysOrg.com reports that a team of computer scientists at Brown University has developed 'Drawing on Air', a haptic-aided interface to help artists to create 3D illustrations while wearing a virtual reality mask. 'The technique introduces two new strategies, using one hand or two hands, to give artists the tools they need for drawing different types of curves, and for viewing and editing their work.' The researchers hope that these techniques will improve the precision with which scientists can interact with their 3D data using a computer. This also would help artists to illustrate complicated artistic, scientific, and medical subjects."

Comments

Porn

[Tablizer]

If they want to sell it and expand it, then find a porn-related application. Works every time.

Re:Porn

[zdude255]

Psst.... Do I model the penis?

Back to "Tactile"

[Jane Q. Public]

"Haptic" is nothing but a disgustingly pretentious way to say "tactile". The dictionary definitions are the same. So let's stick with tactile, okay? People know what tactile feedback is. No need to be pretentious.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[2.7182]

More importantly this kind of thing isn't new. People in computer vision have been doing this for years. It's easier in fact than those black body suit things that they use for movies with the ping pong balls attached. And the thing is, although it sounds great, the applications tend to be more for art than science.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[dameron]

>No need to be pretentious.

Awesome. So I take it you're all for lumping my IBM model M in the same category as VR systems that let me sculpt air, you know, since the model M is famous for its "tactile" response...

Please wake me when the whole fucking net devolves into a bitchfest over word choice. I've an over/under on it.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Jane Q. Public]

I was not "bitching" about the choice of words in particular. I just have a pet peeve about technologies being presented using different words that mean the same thing, in order to make them seem "new" when they are not.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Haptic" is nothing but a disgustingly pretentious way to say "tactile". The dictionary definitions are the same. So let's stick with tactile, okay? People know what tactile feedback is. No need to be pretentious."

Wikipedia disagrees with you: "Although haptic devices are capable of measuring bulk or reactive forces that are applied by the user it should not to be confused with touch or tactile sensors that measure the pressure or force exerted by the user to the interface."

This isn't an author being pretentious. If the word 'tactile' had been used, this article would be full of complaints that there's no actual 'touching of surfaces' involved. It would have put the wrong picture in people's heads. It was the right use of the word and it wasn't a case of somebody showing off their Mr Spockian vocabulary.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Jane Q. Public]

Wikipedia might define "haptic" differently from "tactile", but the dictionaries I checked do not: "haptic adj. Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile." But that is really beside the point, because the article itself disagrees with you.

Quote: "Drawing on Air uses drawing guidelines, force feedback, and two-handed interaction". [emphasis mine]

Quote: "... intuitively adjust line thickness by applying pressure against an imaginary 3D surface, making drawing in the air feel similar to pushing a paintbrush against paper." [emphasis mine]

These are classic force-feedback TACTILE techniques, on the market since well before the old Microsoft Sidewinder joystick. "Tactile". Look it up yourself. Again. And read the whole article.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Haptic" seems to be the preferred choice in the robotics/controls community.

From the image in the article, it looks like they're using a SensAble/Phantom as their input device.
(although it looks like one of the earlier models - their current design is quite a bit more polished).

See: http://www.sensable.com/

As SensAble is (arguably) a member of that community, and also refers to their product via the term "haptic", this seems to be acceptable choice of nomenclature for the article.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Jane Q. Public]

My point remains that as I recall, it used to be "tactile", even in the industry. I am opposed to the practice of using different words that mean essentially the same thing in order to make something seem "new" when it is not.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[FleaPlus]

"Haptic" is nothing but a disgustingly pretentious way to say "tactile".

Dictionary definitions aside, in practice "haptic" and "tactile" mean different things. It's perhaps a blurry line, but in general "tactile" interfaces relies primarily on touch (an external sense), while haptic interfaces may rely on both touch and proprioception (and interoceptive sense).

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems more likely that you're opposed to the practice of using words that you don't understand.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Jane Q. Public]

If you did not like what I had to say, how about making an actual point, rather than being insulting?

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Chibi Merrow]

"Haptic" is nothing but a disgustingly pretentious way to say "tactile".

And your comment is nothing but a very long winded way of proving yourself ignorant. Haptics in virtual reality encompasses much much more than just tactile feedback. And yes, I work in a VR lab so this is (finally) something I'm relatively knowledgeable about. Tactile feedback (like beauty) is only skin deep. Full blown haptic feedback goes much further than that. Compare a vibrotactile array (which is just a grid of cell-phone vibrators, really) with a device like a Sensable PHANToM pen or Chapel Hill's molecular docking simulator, which have more in common with robot arms than vibrators.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Threni]

As long as there's always a keyboard shortcut for stuff like this, mouse movements etc, I don't really care what it's called!

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[dintech]

Is Spockian a word? If it's not it should be.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[thbb]

When working in the domain of haptic interfaces and experimental psychology, we have to make some subtle distinctions as to what are the receptors our interface or experiment are addressing.

Most of the time, we split the sense of touch into those categories:

* tactile sense: addresses the pressure receptors placed underneath the skin, which are denser at the tip of the fingers, in the palms and on the lips and the tongue.
* proprioceptive sense: our internal hear receptors that give us a sense of balance. Also, the joints in our bones have ligaments that send tension signals and enable our brain to reconstruct a mental image of our body and limbs relative position.
* kinesthetic sense: the same bone joints provide use information about movement and external forces, not just position. Kinesthetic sense is our ability to figure this out.

We could also consider separately othe receptors such as those that give us a sense of temperature and pain, but I've never worked on a

So, in our domains (HCI and exp. psychology) we use "haptics" as a shortcut for the tactilo-proprio-kinesthetic senses, while "tactile" is reserved to refer to the signals sent by the skin receptors.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[camperdave]

They are quite similar, but they are not synonyms. Tactile refers to sensing the pressure differences on the skin. The roughness of an object, whether it is pointy or blunt, produce tactile responses. However, the sense of touch can also convey other sensations, hot and cold for example. Haptic refers to the entire sense of touch. Moreover, the difference is similar to the difference between sending and receiving. Tactile refers to receiving touch information. Haptic refers more to sending touch information, or inducing tactile responses. From the wiki: "Haptic technology refers to technology which interfaces the user via the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations and/or motions to the user." Vibrating joysticks, and force feedback devices are haptic.

Another point to keep in mind: Dictionaries are notorious for oversimplifying technical definitions.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure engineering books may have differing definitions for stress or strain than most dictionaries too. But that doesn't make either any more wrong...

It's just a recently developed way (guessing within the last 30 years or so) to categorize something, and to do so just means slightly diverging the meaning of what were otherwise synonymous words. (A lot simpler than having to make a phrase or invent a whole other word from scratch to describe something.)

Anyhow from what I'm getting, haptic means that something responds to touch in a way that is fairly intuitive. It provides an analogue to what you're doing to the simulated environment. So that means pretty much all computer mice are haptic devices. Now if every time you moved over a link or a button and your mouse happened to resist movement such that it felt like dragging it over a notch or bump - then that would be tactile in addition to haptic.

Tactile features can also be used to provide a frame of reference on a haptic input device, even without any active feedback. Take a look at your keyboard. So those little nubs or divots on the F and J keys (on QWERTY at least), and the way the keys feel when pressed are tactile design features. The QWERTY (or other layout) and positioning of all the other function and numpad keys are haptic.

Also you could be completely right to say that an iPod touch is somewhat nice in a haptic design sense, but is serously lacking of any tactile design features.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Yoozer]

If you want to eradicate pretentiousness, go after everyone who uses the word "utilize" instead of "use". In 90% of the cases "use" would do just fine. It's a greater evil compared to haptic/tactile ;).

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Haptic" is nothing but a disgustingly pretentious way to say "tactile".

Funny. That kind of reminds me of the overuse of the word pedantic on this site.

Re:Back to "Tactile"

[armareum]

..and welcome to /.

Open source powered

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't mentioned in the article, but another cool fact is that Dan Keefe wrote the back end for this using Open Source tools, including Linux servers and the G3D graphics engine (http://g3d-cpp.sf.net) that he works on.

Action

[Oligonicella]

I'd like to see the thing in action. The 3D bat looked nice, but how long did it take?

Been there, done that.

[Speare]

About 18 months ago, I implemented a similar mechanism in Python, using the "WorldViz" toolkit, to prototype an engineering training concept where I work. Too bad the project didn't get more funding, it was a blast.

While wearing goggles and data gloves, the user could use various hand gestures to perform different actions. You could point at virtual items, then "levitate" them to new positions. Or you could use a two-finger pointing gesture to "paint" lines in mid-air. Your other hand became a palette, and tapping the palette let you change colors. These drawings were to be saved back into a CAD format.

I also saw a group of artists made a similar system about the same time, whereby they moved a tracking wand through space to "draw" a piece of furniture. The drawing was downloaded into a 3D stereolith program, and a plastic prototype of the furniture was created. Very organic, very cool ideas.

Re:Been there, done that.

[Anonymous Coward]

I implemented a similar mechanism in Python....the user could use various hand gestures to perform different actions. You could point at virtual items, then "levitate" them to new positions.

I too tried this with Python and it nearly killed me. Snapped my arm right clean out of the socket and blood squirted all over the room. Switched to PHP and nobody's got hurt since.

-1 Troll

Re:Been there, done that.

[tehcyder]

While wearing goggles and data gloves, the user could use various hand gestures to perform different actions. You could point at virtual items, then "levitate" them to new positions. Or you could use a two-finger pointing gesture to "paint" lines in mid-air. Your other hand became a palette, and tapping the palette let you change colors. These drawings were to be saved back into a CAD format.

Seriously, what were the advantages over simply creating the drawing in a CAD package in the first place?

Re:Been there, done that.

[Speare]

The purpose of the system was to get a large number of people in many field locations "used to" the physical size and to practice procedures related to large expensive equipment, long before the actual equipment was delivered. The alternative was to build a lot of expensive physical mockups. The drawing capability was added to help sketch-author some of the training materials, because some training scenarios are only discovered while doing the procedures physically.

The people developing the procedures should be able to offer their expert advice into the training materials, even if they're not familiar with CAD. This is directly analogous to motion capture used in acting: actors shouldn't have to know how to smooth out the spline-interpolation of a hierarchically-deformable mesh, in order to add a pirouette to an animation.

Re:In other news...

[QMalcolm]

BOTH of the first two posts were about porn. I salute you, slashdot!

fun but not practical

[ILuvRamen]

Yeah you can kinda feel it and mould it and stuff but if I'm not mistaken, the point seems to be to end up with a 2D graphical product. So...why not just use Maya and rotate that camera and work on one side then rotate it back and see how it looks. Or just do the 4 angles view. In fact, can you even rotate it with this technology or are you blindly working on one side and "feeling" around the back and sides to shape it? You can't feel it but you can see it so it should turn out the same.

Ahhh, my eyes ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... ze goggles do naaathing!

Haptics in gaming

[Allicorn]

Like probably every gamer who ever read something about haptic interfaces, I always wondered about gaming applications. Just recently, indie developer Frictional Games announced they're adding haptic controls to their great little first-person horror adventure "Penumbra".

The neat thing here is that Penumbra is an ideal title to use the technology with. Puzzle-solving in the game is mostly physics based and you use mouse gestures (of a sort) to interact with physics objects in the game's world. Simple example: point crosshair at a filing cabinet drawer, hold down mouse button, drag mouse backwards to pull open the drawer. There's more to it than that, and maybe its a bit gimmicky, but its pretty neat nonetheless and with a haptic controller so that you could gesture in three dimensions and get some sensation of the object your virtual "hand" was interacting with... well, I'd love to give it a try anyway.

Alli

Re:Haptics in gaming

[xonar]

Ever heard of the Wii?

Re:Haptics in gaming

[Tz-Auber]

Ever heard of the Novint Falcon? (http://www.novint.com/)

Been available with a bunch of little games for tech demo purposes (and a full Half-Life 2 mod) for a while. Free (non-commercial) software SDK. Only a couple hundred bucks instead of a few thousand for previous devices.

Re:Haptics in gaming

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Haptics controllers are going to be appearing at compusa before christmas.

http://home.novint.com/

I tried it out the other day, was very cool.

Moderation?

[Jane Q. Public]

How can something be marked down as "overrated" when it had not been rated at all yet? That is pretty silly. Modders, please try to be responsible.

Re:Moderation?

[Jane Q. Public]

Modders, please try to be responsible. Your demonstration that you CAN mod however you want does not make it justified.

Re:Moderation?

[Gideon Fubar]

Hi... Welcome to Slashdot.. we might as well go play in /b/, or stand in traffic.

Re:Moderation?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can something be marked down as "overrated" when it had not been rated at all yet? Because you have an automatic +1 Karma-Bonus Modifier that gives all your posts an initial 2 score, even though it doesn't deserve it most of the time. If you want your posts to be fairly moderated on their own merits, check the "Ignore Karma bonus" option when posting, except when you have something really important to say.

Posting AC because I've already moderated in this thread.

Using one hand or two hands

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think artists will be able to adapt to such a radical design.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, kdawson the biggest fuckup ever. This is Slashdot, not Daily Kos; sometimes it's hard to tell them apart.

Very Similar to IMAX's "Sandde" System

[evenmoreconfused]

FWIW, IMAX has had a proprietary system like this for creating 3D stereoscopic animation since the mid-90's. It's called SANDDE (Stereo ANimation Drawing DEvice and has been used in various 3D animated films including Paint Misbehavin', Cyberworld, Falling In Love Again and Moonman. Sandde can draw individual still images but, as a tool for creating animation, is even better at creating long sequences of similar drawings using either onion-skinning or sophisticated in-betweening techniques. It is also currently used extensively in the Stereo Lab of the National Film Board of Canada and is licenced to other IMAX film production companies for projects they are working on.

Fair disclosure: I have been the project manager on SANDDE since 1993, so I am hardly impartial.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the support there.
 
and for the bitch who modded me down? are you that much of a dumb ass not to see how much kdickson is dragging this site down? what a bunch of asshats.

I'd love to play with it

[kn0tw0rk]

Then I'd be able to do some funky 3d celtic knots then :)

Guess I'll be waiting a couple of years for the commercial release of it.

Well

[kitsunewarlock]

I've been waiting YEARS for this technology to advance for architecture modeling. When you want to place a block in JUST the right place and you get it off by a cm...ugh gets so frustrating you just give up with most modeling software and go back to basswood or fix everything in Illustrator.

I wonder how accurate this software is...

Re:Poor Roland

[rdwald]

Back when he used to add a second link on each submission to his blog's take on the news, I was pissed off. Now that he's stopped doing that, though, I frankly tend to enjoy his articles more than average. Slashdot should just admit it and make Roland an official editor: that way, people who dislike him can just log on and block him directly.

More importantly this kind of thing isn't new.

[Harmonious Botch]

Of course it is nothing new - this is a Roland submission.

No.

[Prysorra]

At least not you.

(Clicks AC button)

"Drawing-on-air" prior art

[mrjb]

If memory serves well, sesame street has had this for a long time. And without the virtual reality masks too.

Re:"Drawing-on-air" prior art

[Otto95]

Right you are. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmo's_World Elmo is way ahead of his time.

Re:Back to "Tactile" - Parent is incorrect, mods

[DIGITAiLor]

I understand where you're coming from etymologically, but these words are not synonymous when used in the visual arts or professions. "Haptic" is essentially used to mean gestural, whereas tactile is used to mean related to the experience of touch.

Example: Jackson Pollock was possibly the most haptic painter of all time. He was also one of the least tactile.

In this context, the system is haptic because it encodes gestures. It is not tactile because it does not provide tactile feedback. You draw on air- it gets no less tactile that that!

Already been studied

[Anonymous Coward]

While this is interesting, it isn't anything new. Past papers on this
  topic include:
A. Gregory, S Ehmann, and M. Lin. inTouch: Interactive multiresolution modeling and 3D painting with a haptic device. IEEE Virtual Reality International Symposium, pages 45 - 51, 2000.

G. Wesche and H. Seidel. Freedrawer: a free-form sketching system on the responsive workbench. Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, pages 167 - 174, 2001.

M. Matsumiya, H. Takemura and N. Yokoya. An immerive modeling system for 3D free-form design using implicit surfaces. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, pages 67 - 74. 2000.

People have also done things like painting on 3D surface in VR and curve reduction in VR.

GP correct. Don't mod Parent informative.

[aepervius]

Dictionary definition of haptic:

Haptic free dictionary "haptic Pronunciation (hptk) adj. Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile."
Same page /Thesaurus (note that the thesaurus for tactile say the same definition !) :
"Adj. 1. haptic - of or relating to or proceeding from the sense of touch; "haptic data"; "a tactile reflex; Synonym : tactile,,tactual".



There is NOTHING about gesture in the definition and only tactile mention. In other word the parent post above me is NOT informative.

I was trying similar thing in blender.

[Anonymous Coward]

The trick is to adjust two camera windows..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30142075@N00/49561816/in/datetaken/
And then I have to cross my eyes but that causes some headache after 5 hours of modelling.

These links describe a bit how I setup the cameras.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30142075@N00/63089626/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30142075@N00/63089628/in/photostream/

goggles

[I7D]

Is anybody familiar with an in-headset pair of goggles for less then $250? Its seems like 3D goggles have never taken off, even though it has the potential to revolutionize many industries (imho).

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