(1) During fingertip contact, the mechanical interaction between the fingernail and bone affect blood pooling, which yields coloration changes that transduce normal and shear forces surprisingly well. The fingernail and surrounding skin are tracked and imaged by an external camera system, and coloration changes are related to force after a calibration proceduce. Depending on the individual, the maximum force range is around 8 N and the typical time constants are around 0.2 seconds. The center of the fingernail responds best at low force levels such as 0 to 2 N, while the surrounding skin responds best at high force levels.

(2) The Sarcos Treadport locomotion interface is a large tilting treadmill with a 3-wall CAVE-like visual display and an active mechanical tether attached to a user via a harness. Research addresses how mechanical, visual, and auditory displays can be integrated to produce correct metric perceptions of virtual environments, which usually suffer from spatial compression. To achieve a full multi-sensory experience and a strong sense of immersion, an atmospheric display is being added by essentially converting the Treadport space into a 3D wind tunnel.

Speaker Bio:

John M. Hollerbach is Professor of Computer Science, and Research Professor of Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Utah. He also directs the Robotics Track, a joint graduate program between the School of Computing and Department of Mechanical Engineering. From 1989-1994 he was the Natural Sciences and Engineering/Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Professor of Robotics at McGill University, jointly in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. From 1982-1989 he was on the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT; from 1978-1982 he was a Research Scientist. He received his BS in chemistry ('68) and MS in mathematics ('69) from the University of Michigan, and SM ('75) and PhD ('78) from MIT in Computer Science.

In 1984 he received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, in 1988 he was named a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and in 1996 he became an IEEE Fellow. He was the Program Chairman of the 1989 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, a member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society from 1989-1993, Technical Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation from 1989-1994, and Treasurer of the IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems from 1992-1997. He was a member of the 1994-1995 National Research Council Committee on Virtual Reality Research and Development. Presently he is Editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research, a Senior Editor of Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, and a Governing Board member of the electronic journal Haptics-e. His research interests combine robotics, human motor control, teleoperation, and virtual reality.

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