What is Haptic Education?
Adding the tactile sensation to virtual learning. Haptic, from the Greek αφη (Haphe), means “pertaining to the sense of touch” (Miriam-Webster’s Online dictionary), and haptic technology refers to technology that interfaces with the user via applied tactile and/or force feedback, i.e. vibrations and/or motions. Read More
‘Several examples of successful use of haptics have been demonstrated in the areas of the arts, design, entertainment, and medicine (Laycock & Day, 2003); however, the field of education has been as yet untapped. The main barriers for haptic usage historically have been computing power and the high price of haptic devices, which have limited/prevented the application of haptics in fields that are traditionally economically bounded such as education. However, in recent years the prices of haptic devices have come down to a degree where they are no longer cost prohibitive. Thus, it is now a financially viable option within the field of public education.’
Second Life and Croquet were explored in a haptic education research project. The project was to program a virtual frog that could be dissected incorporating force feedback using the Novint Falcon. Novint Falcon is haptic device costing $239.
From Wikipedia: “In June 2007, Novint Technologies, Inc. introduced the first affordable, high-fidelity 3D Touch (haptic) game controller. The Novint Falcon replaces a mouse or joystick and lets users feel realistic game interactions, objects, environments, and force feedback in enabled games.”
‘Our ultimate goal was to get the haptic device talking to the virtual world. That meant both navigation and haptic feedback. We could then build virtual objects with relative ease. Most modern virtual worlds offer easy object importation capabilities, and with resources like Google’s 3D Warehouse there was already a large selection to work with.’ Read detailed study
