Professor Bob Stone: These Gloves Are Made For Touching

Hi!

Professor Bob Stone is a great guy and a pioneer in AR. He is in the AWE Hall of Fame, AWE being Augmented World Expo. In In this short video we have fun explaining haptics, haptics being the relationship between human touch and mechanical touch. Forgive me if I show my background in video art.(Actually as I was making this, I was wondering : how can documentaries and interviews be re-invented for a 3D environment?)

Bob has a ton of great videos on Youtube, some historical, some contemporary. This haptic video is an excerpt of a longer interview that I will shar elater. Let me know what you think.

From the beginnings of haptics, to this, a robotic finger just publicly announced yesterday.… haptics suddenly became very intimate.

neilsparkes of the day Hurricanes and more. Stay safe and positive.

onwARd,

Steve

The following is from when I was just starting to study haptics. Ultimately, haptics, AR, VR and more will all influence and interact with each other, more than they are now.

The skin; the largest organ_. The wondrous organs and processes within this sack of flesh, especially the skeletal, muscular and nervous systems. We take for granted that we can do things like jump, speak and button our clothes.

Zooming in on the act of buttoning a shirt, we see a number of interactions. The brain controls muscles related to the eyes, arms and hands. Information about texture and positioning is exchanged between brain and fingers. Muscles and tendons make movements, some obvious, some extremely subtle. Fingertips maneuver the object. Voila! The shirt is buttoned. All parts of the buttoning operation are important. However, from the viewpoint of haptics, the three nerves connected to the fingers deserve a closer look.

The median nerve controls the thumb and wrist. It also gives feeling to the skin around the palm, thumb, middle and index fingers. It runs down the inside of the arm, crosses the front of the elbow and passes through the wrist bones and connective tissue of the carpal tunnel. Compressing the median nerve over a long period can result in carpal tunnel syndrome.

Another nerve, the ulnar nerve, is connected to the muscles that bend the wrist and fingers. It passes behind the elbow. When someone says, “I hit my funny bone”, they could also say “ I’ve unexpectedly stimulated my ulnar nerve”.

Finally, the radial nerve, which straightens the wrist, thumb and fingers. It gives feeling to the skin on the back of the hand, as well as the index finger, middle finger, and half of the ring finger. Considered by many to be the second most important nerve in the body, the radial nerve is also responsible for bending the elbow.

Stelarc: I was fortunate to document some of his third hand projects, as well as chat with his prosthetic head. FWIW, I have only knowingly photobombed once:

That’s it for now.

Clap or send me a HANDsome sum if you like maith. Or just suggest maith to someone who might be interested. Thank you.

Steve