A Networked Virtual Environment for Teaching Handwritten Characters Through Haptization of Human Motor Skills

We present an approach to realize a networked on-line education system among physically separated participants targeted at teaching handwritten characters. In addition to visual and acoustic information, our system provides a haptic channel to intuitively learn remote instructor's fine motor skills through the sense of touch. The human touch sensation, however, is very sensitive for performance degradation caused by delays, packet losses, and jitters in the networked virtual reality (NVR) systems. Therefore, we show a method to efficiently share virtual space information by compensating for the performance degradation factors. We take a hybrid approach to implement both data consistency by client-server and scalability by peer-to-peer models. The handwritten character learning system is built on the hybrid architecture and realizes the participants to tightly share partners' haptic motions. We also describe an experiment conducted to validate the effectiveness of the haptic modality for teaching handwritten characters.

[1]  Jacques Marescaux,et al.  Transatlantic robot-assisted telesurgery , 2001, Nature.

[2]  Hiroaki Nishino,et al.  A Method of Creating 3D Haptic Sensation Using Interactive Evolutionary Computation , 2006 .

[3]  Akira Yamaguchi,et al.  A remote instruction system empowered by tightly shared haptic sensation , 2007, SPIE Optics East.

[4]  Etienne Burdet,et al.  A robotic teacher of Chinese handwriting , 2002, Proceedings 10th Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems. HAPTICS 2002.

[5]  John Kenneth Salisbury,et al.  Haptic Rendering: Introductory Concepts , 2004, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[6]  Thomas H. Massie,et al.  The PHANToM Haptic Interface: A Device for Probing Virtual Objects , 1994 .

[7]  Yukihiro Matsubara,et al.  Pencil Touch Learning System for Japanese Handwriting Based on the Haptic Device , 2004 .

[8]  Yong-Moo Kwon,et al.  A distributed virtual reality framework for Korea-Japan high-speed network testbed , 2006, 20th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications - Volume 1 (AINA'06).

[9]  Christos Bouras,et al.  Networked Virtual Environments , 2009 .

[10]  Hiroaki Nishino,et al.  Development and Evaluation of a Hybrid Shared Tele-Haptic System , 2006, VSMM.

[11]  Barbara Deml,et al.  A Study on Visual, Auditory, and Haptic Feedback for Assembly Tasks , 2004, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[12]  M. A. Srinivassan.  The impact of visual information on the haptic perception of stiffness in virtual environments , 1996 .

[13]  Abdulmotaleb El-Saddik,et al.  A haptic multimedia handwriting learning system , 2007, Emme '07.

[14]  Wai Yu,et al.  Haptic virtual environment performance over IP networks: a case study , 2003, Proceedings Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real-Time Applications.

[15]  Kaoru Sezaki,et al.  Architecture of haptics communication system for adaptation to network environments , 2001, IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, 2001. ICME 2001..

[16]  Yutaka Ishibashi,et al.  Group synchronization control for haptic media in networked virtual environments , 2004, 12th International Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems, 2004. HAPTICS '04. Proceedings..