Computing with feeling

Abstract Computers are usually considered as manipulators of numbers, words and symbols: machines with which we communicate visually by printers, plotters and displays, and sometimes audibly through music synthesis and speech recognition. We are engaged in a project involving touch communication with computers in order to broaden computer graphics capability. Originally pioneered by Noll and by Batter and Brooks, touch communication with computers can link together brain, hands and computer to explore new worlds of felt imagery, worlds existing only in computer memory. Humans are distinguished from other animals particularly by two things: the hands, which allow fine manipulations of objects in the environment, and the brain, which permits thought. Touch communication with computers employs both of these most human capabilities. What we're searching for is a closer symbiosis between humans and machines, a partnership of two unlike species growing together as both learn to perform joint tasks better. This symbiosis demands a better interface where machine meets person. The first of our touch communication systems is a three-dimensional force-position system called “Touchy Feely” in which mechanical simplicity is gained by using a tetrahedral coordinate system, employing the computer to transform into other coordinate systems. We are also designing a force, torque, position and orientation system. “Touchy Twisty”, which will permit the user to feel the docking of one three-dimensional object with another: in other words, to allow the assembly of computer simulated objects. There are many applications of human-computer touch communication to research and learning, extending into such areas as computer science, engineering design, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, psychology, art, and insight for the blind. With touch communication we can feel things never felt or seen before and perceive spatial relationships not otherwise possible. We can thereby create a more sensitive awareness and understanding of natural phenomena in three-dimensional space, phenomena involving forces and torques for which visual representation is often inappropriate or impossible.