Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.
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Publication Design of Body-Grounded Tactile Actuators for Playback of Human Physical Contact(2011-06-01) Kuchenbecker, Katherine J; Stanley, Andrew AWe present four wearable tactile actuators capable of recreating physical sensations commonly experienced in human interactions, including tapping on, dragging across, squeezing, and twisting an individual’s wrist. In seeking to create tactile signals that feel natural and are easy to understand, we developed movement control interfaces to play back each of these forms of actual human physical contact. Through iterative design, prototyping, programming, and testing, each of these servo-motor-based mechanisms produces a signal that is gradable in magnitude, can be played in a variety of temporal patterns, is localizable to a small area of skin, and, for three of the four actuators, has an associated direction. Additionally, we have tried to design toward many of the characteristics that have made high frequency vibration the most common form of wearable tactile feedback, including low cost, light weight, comfort, and small size. Bolstered by largely positive comments from naive users during an informal testing session, we plan to continue improving these devices for future use in tactile motion guidance.Publication VerroTouch: High-Frequency Acceleration Feedback for Telerobotic Surgery(2010-07-01) Kuchenbecker, Katherine J; Gewirtz, Jamie; Mendoza, Pierre J; McMahan, William; Lee, David I; Standish, DorseyThe Intuitive da Vinci system enables surgeons to see and manipulate structures deep within the body via tiny incisions. Though the robotic tools mimic one's hand motions, surgeons cannot feel what the tools are touching, a striking contrast to non-robotic techniques. We have developed a new method for partially restoring this lost sense of touch. Our VerroTouch system measures the vibrations caused by tool contact and immediately recreates them on the master handles for the surgeon to feel. This augmentation enables the surgeon to feel the texture of rough surfaces, the start and end of contact with manipulated objects, and other important tactile events. While it does not provide low frequency forces, we believe vibrotactile feedback will be highly useful for surgical task execution, a hypothesis we we will test in future work.Publication Improving Telerobotic Touch Via High-Frequency Acceleration Matching(2006-06-26) Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.; Niemeyer, GünterHumans rely on information-laden high-frequency accelerations in addition to quasi-static forces when interacting with objects via a handheld tool. Telerobotic systems have traditionally struggled to portray such contact transients due to closed-loop bandwidth and stability limitations, leaving remote objects feeling soft and undefined. This work seeks to maximize the user’s feel for the environment through the approach of acceleration matching; high-frequency fingertip accelerations are combined with standard low-frequency position feedback without requiring a secondary actuator on the master device. In this method, the natural dynamics of the master are identified offline using frequency-domain techniques, estimating the relationship between commanded motor current and handle acceleration while a user holds the device. During subsequent telerobotic interactions, a high-bandwidth sensor measures accelerations at the slave’s end effector, and the real-time controller re-creates these important signals at the master handle by inverting the identified model. The details of this approach are explored herein, and its ability to render hard and rough surfaces is demonstrated on a standard master-slave system. Combining high-frequency acceleration matching with position-error-based feedback of quasi-static forces creates a hybrid signal that closely corresponds to human sensing capabilities, instilling telerobotics with a more realistic sense of remote touch.Publication Haptography: capturing the feel of real objects to enable authentic haptic rendering (invited paper)(2008-02-14) Kuchenbecker, Katherine JHaptic interfaces are designed to allow humans to touch virtual objects as though they were real. Unfortunately, virtual surface models currently require extensive hand tuning and do not feel authentic, which limits the usefulness and applicability of such systems. The proposed approach of haptography seeks to address this deficiency by basing models on haptic data recorded from real interactions between a human and a target object. The studio haptographer uses a fully instrumented stylus to tap, press, and stroke an item in a controlled environment while a computer system records positions, orientations, velocities, accelerations, and forces. The point-and-touch haptographer carries a simply instrumented stylus around during daily life, using it to capture interesting haptic properties of items in the real world. Recorded data is distilled into a haptograph, the haptic impression of the object or surface patch, including properties such as local shape, stiffness, friction, and texture. Finally, the feel of the probed object is recreated via a haptic interface by accounting for the device's natural dynamics and focusing on the feedback of high-frequency accelerations.Publication The Touch Thimble: Providing Fingertip Contact Feedback During Point-Force Haptic Interaction(2008-03-14) Kuchenbecker, Katherine J; Ferguson, David; Kutzer, Michael; Moses, Matthew; Okamura, Allison MTouching a real object with your fingertip provides simultaneous tactile and force feedback, yet most haptic interfaces for virtual environments can convey only one of these two essential modalities. To address this opportunity, we designed, prototyped, and evaluated the Touch Thimble, a new fingertip device that provides the user with the cutaneous sensation of making and breaking contact with virtual surfaces. Designed to attach to the endpoint of an impedance-type haptic interface like a SensAble Phantom, the Touch Thimble includes a slightly oversize cup that is suspended around the fingertip by passive springs. When the haptic interface applies contact forces from the virtual environment, the springs deflect to allow contact between the user's fingertip and the inner surface of the cup. We evaluated a prototype Touch Thimble against a standard thimble in a formal user study and found that it did not improve nor degrade subjects' ability to recognize smoothly curving surfaces. Although four of the eight subjects preferred it to the standard interface, overall the Touch Thimble made subjects slightly slower at recognizing the presented shapes. Detailed subject comments point out strengths and weaknesses of the current design and suggest avenues for future development of the device.Publication Haptic Displayof Realistic Tool Contact via Dynamically Compensated Control of a Dedicated Actuator(2009-12-15) McMahan, William; Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.High frequency contact accelerations convey important information that the vast majority of haptic interfaces cannot render. Building on prior work, we present an approach to haptic interface design that uses a dedicated linear voice coil actuator and a dynamic system model to allow the user to feel these signals. This approach was tested through use in a bilateral teleoperation experiment where a user explored three textured surfaces under three different acceleration control architectures: none, constant gain, and dynamic compensation. The controllers that use the dedicated actuator vastly outperform traditional position-position control at conveying realistic contact accelerations. Analysis of root mean square error, linear regression, and discrete Fourier transforms of the acceleration data also indicate a slight performance benefit for dynamic compensation over constant gain.Publication Automatic Filter Design for Synthesis of Haptic Textures from Recorded Acceleration Data(2010-05-01) Kuchenbecker, Katherine J; Yoshioka, Takashi; Romano, Joseph MSliding a probe over a textured surface generates a rich collection of vibrations that one can easily use to create a mental model of the surface. Haptic virtual environments attempt to mimic these real interactions, but common haptic rendering techniques typically fail to reproduce the sensations that are encountered during texture exploration. Past approaches have focused on building a representation of textures using a priori ideas about surface properties. Instead, this paper describes a process of synthesizing probe-surface interactions from data recorded from real interactions. We explain how to apply the mathematical principles of Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) to develop a discrete transfer function that represents the acceleration response under specific probe-surface interaction conditions. We then use this predictive transfer function to generate unique acceleration signals of arbitrary length. In order to move between transfer functions from different probe-surface interaction conditions, we develop a method for interpolating the variables involved in the texture synthesis process. Finally, we compare the results of this process with real recorded acceleration signals, and we show that the two correlate strongly in the frequency domain.Publication Recreating the Feel of the Human Chest in a CPR Manikin via Programmable Pneumatic Damping(2012-03-01) Kuchenbecker, Katherine J; Stanley, Andrew A; Healey, Simon K; Maltese, Matthew RIt is well known that the human chest exhibits a strong force displacement hysteresis during CPR, a stark contrast to the non hysteretic behavior of standard spring manikins. We hypothesize that individuals with experience performing CPR on humans would perceive a manikin with damping as more realistic and better for training. By analyzing data collected from chest compressions on real patients, we created a dynamic model that accounts for this hysteresis with a linear spring and a one-way variable damper, and we built a new high-fidelity manikin to enact the desired force displacement relationship. A linkage attached to the chest plate converts vertical compression motions to the horizontal displacement of a set of pneumatic dashpot pistons, sending a volume of air into and out of the manikin through a programmable valve. Position and pressure sensors allow a microcontroller to adjust the valve orifice so that the provided damping force closely follows the desired damping force throughout the compression cycle. Eight experienced CPR practitioners tested both the new manikin and an identical looking standard manikin; the manikin with damping received significantly higher ratings for haptic realism and perceived utility as a training tool.Publication Quantifying the Value of Visual and Haptic Position Feedback During Force-Based Motion Control(2007-04-02) Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.; Gurari, Netta; Okamura, Allison M.Controlling the motion of a prosthetic upper limb without visual feedback is extremely difficult because the wearer does not know the prosthesis’ configuration. This paper describes an experiment designed to determine the relative importance of visual and haptic position feedback during targeted force-based motion by non-amputee human subjects as an analogy to prosthetic use. Subjects control the angle of a virtual proxy through an admittance relationship by generating torque at the MCP joint of the right index finger. During successive repetitions of a target acquisition task, the proxy’s state is selectively conveyed to the user through graphical display, finger motion, and tactile stimulation. Performance metrics for each feedback condition will provide insights on the role of haptic position feedback and may help guide the development of future upper-limb prostheses.Publication Haptically Assisted Golf Putting Through a Planar Four-Cable System(2011-06-01) Kuchenbecker, Katherine J; Huang, Peter Y; Kunkel, Jacquelyn A; Brindza, JordanIndividuals learning a new sport often repeat a motion hundreds or thousands of times to try to perfect their form. The quintessential example of this process may be a beginning golfer struggling to learn to putt, where strokes must be precise and consistent in order to place the ball in the hole. This paper presents a four-cable haptic device designed to help golfers learn to improve their putting accuracy. This planar three-DOF system provides feedback that consists of two Cartesian forces and one angular moment. We present the system’s design and kinematics, along with a closed-loop controller that helps the user keep the putter head at the correct angle in the plane. We evaluated our design through a study in which five subjects used the system to repeatedly putt at a target both with and without assistance. While assistance did not change the mean of the putting distribution, it did significantly affect the variance for some subjects