Page 13 - ME-07-E
P. 13
“Touch is active and requires this manner, the robot provides geometric feedback. PhD candidate
action. This is a huge challenge” Yair Herbst
The mouse also contains a system of pins – metal and advisors
Dr. Yair Herbst (33) completed his BSc in biomedi- Prof. Alon Wolf
cal engineering at the Technion and then entered the pinheads that can vary their height to provide infor- and Prof. Lihi
direct PhD track in mechanical engineering. “In the Zelnik-Manor
middle of my degree I realized I was more interested mation about texture.”
in mechanics,” he says. “That’s how I came to Prof.
Wolf’s lab, which lies on the border between mechan- Why does the digitization of touch present such a
ical engineering and medicine and works on develop-
ments such as medical robots.” big challenge?
Herbst began his PhD with Prof. Zelnik-Manor and “Our sense of touch depends greatly on our ac-
Prof. Wolf as co-advisors just over three years ago. As
part of it, two devices were developed that make it tions. When we look at something, we are passive.
possible to touch virtual displays: a glove to be worn
on the hand, and a device resembling a computer When a digital screen shows a picture, it allows our
mouse.
sense of sight to perform the same type of interaction
The original plan, says Herbst, was to develop a
rather massive glove for the hand that provides sen- as with any other observation: We passively look at a
sory feedback when it touches a picture on a screen:
“For instance, if a picture of an apple appears on the specific image.
screen, we wanted the user to be able to use the
glove to perceive the geometric shape of the apple. “Touch, on the other hand, works differently. If we
That was our starting point, and we thought it would
be suitable for rehabilitative applications.” place our hand on a velvet surface without moving it,
However, at a certain point the research team real- the feedback of the fabric will be different than if we
ized that quite a few existing companies were already
working on similar devices. So they decided to take move our hand over the fabric. We are much more ac-
their research to the next level. “The first device we
developed in practice is a sort of mouse and screen, tive in touch.”
which provide both coarse and fine resolution. For
example, if the user sees a picture of a balloon and How do you view this system’s market relevance?
moves the mouse over it, the corresponding robot
within the mouse conforms accordingly and changes Wolf: “From a business angle, there is no doubt
shape so that the hand holding the mouse perceives
a rounding that reflects the shape of the balloon. In that gaming is a huge market, which is also easy to
enter. The medical market has tremendous potential
but is heavily regulated, which is liable to slow the
adoption of the technology. But it will certainly be
amazing when doctors can eventually perform clini-
cal examinations remotely.
“I also see how the system could make social con-
tributions – making it possible for blind people to
touch remotely, for example, and the whole field of
sensory rehabilitation.”
Herbst: “It will clearly be easier to enter the e-com-
merce and gaming sectors, and the system has ex-
cellent business potential in these fields. But I really
hope to see broad applications that will improve peo-
ple’s quality of life, such as sensory apps that allow
people to observe the progress of their rehabilitation,
or a touch app for the visually impaired.”
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering | MEgazine | 13
