Touch

Get the kit on in a touchy-feely test of the latest in haptic devices at the haptic funfair.

Give William Harwin a hand and put on his multi-fingered devices. Play virtual basketball, air hockey and have a turn on his two-fingered piano…

Play Novint Falcon and feel how weight, shapes, textures, dimensions and dynamics seem so very real. Explore controlling a game in three dimensions and feel the high-fidelity, three-dimensional force feedback. Your mouse and joystick may well be relegated to the antiques division after this…

Meet Stephen Brewster and his team from the University of Glasgow as they take you on a magical demystifying tour of their latest inventions. Feel how different tactile icons react when you touch them on screen. And find out how these are being developed for mobile devices, text entries, web links and camera phones.

How are games being harnessed to assist the visually impaired to browse and navigate computer interfaces? Hold on and lose yourself in a game of maze. Will you be able to find your way out? See how this could be used to navigate in the future.

Explore how visually impaired people can have better access to graphs by using the Phantom Omni device. Hear and feel the consequences of manipulating the figures for yourself. Is this the end of paper graphs as we know them?

Patrick Langdon and Faustina Hwang want you to try out devices they’re developing to help patients overcome motion impairment.

And take a chance and try to navigate your way around the Dana café using William’s haptic torch. Will you manage to avoid hitting any obstacles, or will you be a dab hand and be able to detect the correct distances to objects?

video

podcast

You can download an audio podcast [mp4] of this event.

This event is supported by The Royal Academy of Engineering.

Event organised by:
The Science Museum

Speakers

Stephen Brewster, Professor of Human–Computer Interaction, University of Glasgow
Andrew Crossan, postdoctoral researcher in the Multimodal Interaction Group, University of Glasgow
David McGookin, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow
Patrick Langdon, senior researcher, Engineering Design Centre, Cambridge University
Faustina Hwang, lecturer, School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading
William Harwin, Head of the Interactive Systems Research Group, University of Reading

Facilitator: Susanne Buck, Educational Facilitator, MA Creative Practices for Narrative Environments, Central St Martins

This event is part of 5 Senses