VIS-HAPT: A Methodology Proposal to Develop Visuo-Haptic Environments in Education 4.0

Education 4.0 demands a flexible combination of digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving in educational settings linked to real-world scenarios. Haptic technology incorporates the sense of touch into a visual simulator to enrich the user’s sensory experience, thus supporting a meaningful learning process. After developing several visuo-haptic simulators, our team identified serious difficulties and important challenges to achieve successful learning environments within the framework of Education 4.0. This paper presents the VIS-HAPT methodology for developing realistic visuo-haptic scenarios to promote the learning of science and physics concepts for engineering students. This methodology consists of four stages that integrate different aspects and processes leading to meaningful learning experiences for students. The different processes that must be carried out through the different stages, the difficulties to overcome and recommendations on how to face them are all described herein. The results are encouraging since a significant decrease (of approximately 40%) in the development and implementation times was obtained as compared with previous efforts. The quality of the visuo-haptic environments was also enhanced. Student perceptions of the benefits of using visuo-haptic simulators to enhance their understanding of physics concepts also improved after using the proposed methodology. The incorporation of haptic technologies in higher education settings will certainly foster better student performance in subsequent real environments related to Industry 4.0

We gain a lot…but what are we losing? A critical reflection on the implications of digital design technologies

PurposeHighly sophisticated digital technologies have distanced architects and designers from intimate and immediate hand-drawing practices. Meanwhile the changes they rapidly bring come with undetected changes in cultural and social norms regarding the built environment. The growing dependence on computers calls for a more holistic, socially inclusive and place-responsive design practice. This paper aims to shed light on what we are losing in the design process as we rapidly transition to communicate architecture using digital media. The authors contemplate the paradigms in which the human body and physical objects still play an important role in today's design environment.Design/methodology/approachThe paper looks at current trends in developing and establishing “computer imaging” within architectural education, and the architectural profession through parametric design and the area of sustainability. In order to reveal novel and hybrid ways of architectural image-making, it also looks into art forms that already experiment with bodily practices in design by taking an artisanal animation project as a case study.FindingsThe renewed longing for craft, haptic environments, tactile experiences and hand-crafted artifacts and artworks that engage the senses can be exemplified with the success of the documentary Last Dance on the Main, an animated film on the endangered layers of human presence in one of Montreal's downtown neighborhoods. The open possibilities for creative hybridizations between the handmade and the digital in architecture practice and education are exposed.Originality/valueThe influence of film on the perception and consequent design of cities is well documented. There is little literature, however, on how the materiality and process of artisanal film animation can provide alternative, if not additional, insights on how to communicate various aspects of the built environment, particularly those rooted in the human body. Furthermore, handmade film explores a broader understanding of sustainability, which includes considerations for social and cultural contexts.

Active and Passive Haptic Perception of Shape: Passive Haptics Can Support Navigation

Real-time haptic interactions occur under two exploration modes: active and passive. In this paper, we present a series of experiments that evaluate the main perceptual characteristics of both exploration modes. In particular, we focus on haptic shape recognition as it represents a fundamental task in many applications using haptic environments. The results of four experiments conducted with a group of 10 voluntary subjects show that the differences in motor activity between active and passive haptics ease the perception of surfaces for the first case and the perception of pathways for the latter. In addition, the guidance nature of passive haptics makes the pathway direction easy to recognize. This work shows that this last observation could find application in more challenging tasks such as navigation in space.

Comparing Different Visuo-Haptic Environments for Virtual Prototyping Applications

The use of haptic devices in Virtual Reality applications makes the interaction with the digital objects easier, by involving the sense of touch in the simulation. The most widespread devices are stylus-based, so the user interacts with the virtual world via either a tool or a stylus. These kinds of devices have been effectively used in several virtual prototyping applications, in order to allow the users to easily interact with the digital model of a product. Among the several open issues related to these applications, there is the choice of the set-up and of the techniques adopted to combine the visual and the haptic stimuli. This paper presents the comparison of three different solutions specifically studied for virtual prototyping applications and in particular for usability assessment. The first is a simple desktop configuration where the user looks at a screen, and visual and haptic stimuli are presented in a de-located manner. The second is a HMD based set-up where the user has a more natural first-person immersive interaction. The third requires a video-see-trough HMD in order to augment the virtual scene with the visualization of the real user’s hand. The test realized with the users on these three different setups have been finalized to study the effect of two different factors that are crucial for the effectiveness and the user-friendliness of the interaction. One is the perception of the visual and haptic stimuli in a collocated manner; the other is the visualization of his/her own hand during the interaction with the virtual product.