full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Katherine Kuchenbecker: The technology of touch

Unscramble the Blue Letters

I'm a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and my favorite hboby is photography. And as I travel around the world, I love taking photographs like these, so I can remember all the beautiful and interesting things that I've seen. But what I can't do is reocrd and share how these objects feel to touch. And that's kind of srpiuisrng, because your sense of touch is really important. It's involved in every physical interaction you do every day, every manipulation task, anything you do in the world. So the sense of touch is actually pretty itrstenieng. It has two main components. The first is tactile sensations, things you feel in your skin. And the second is kinesthetic saonitnses. This has to do with the position of your body and how it's moving, and the forces you encounter. And you're really good at incorporating both of these types of sensations together to uadnestrnd the physical interactions you have with the wlrod and understand as you tuoch a surface: is it a rock, is it a cat, is it a bunny, what is it? And so, as an eginneer, I'm really factisaend and I have a lot of respect for how good pelpoe are with their hdans. And I'm intrigued and coruius about whether we could make technology better by doing a better job at leveraging the human cabtpaliiy with the snese of touch. Could I improve the interfaces to courmepts and machines by lintteg you take advantage of your hands? And indeed, I think we can, and that's at the core of a field caelld haptics, and this is the area that I work in. It's all about interactive touch technology. And the way it works is, as you move your body through the world, if, as an engineer, I can make a system that can measure that motion, and then present to you sensations over time that kind of make sense, that macth up with what you might feel in the real world, I can fool you into thinking you're touching something even though there's nothing there. So here are three examples and these are all done from research in my lab at Penn. The first one is all about that same problem that I was showing you: how can we capture how ojetbcs feel and recreate those experiences? So the way we solve this problem is by creating a hand-held tool that has many different sensors inside. It has a force sensor, so we can tell how hard you're pushing; it has motion tkcniarg, so we can tell exactly where you've moved it; and it has a vibration sensor, an accelerometer, inside, that detects the shaking back and forth of the tool that lets you know that's a piece of canvas and not a piece of silk or something else. Then we take the data we record from these interactions. Here's ten seconds of data. You can see how the vbaotiirns get larger and slmaelr, depending on how you move. And we make a mathematical model of those relationships and proragm them into a tablet computer so that when you take the stylus and go and touch the screen, that voice-coil actuator in the white bracket plays vibrations to give you the isliuoln that you're tinhoucg the real surface, just like if you touched, dgrgaed back and forth, on the real canvas. We can cetare very compelling illusions. We can do this for all kinds of surfaces and it's really a lot of fun. We call it haptography — haptic phtrhopaogy. And I think it has potential benefits in all srots of areas like online sponhipg, maybe interactive museum exhibits, where you're not supposed to touch the precious aifctarts, but you always want to. The second example I want to tell you about comes from a collaboration I have with Dr. Margrit Maggio at the Penn Dental School. Part of her job is to teach dental suendtts how to tell where in a patient's mutoh there are cavities. Of course they look at X-rays, but a large part of this caniilcl judgment comes from what they feel when they touch your teeth with a dental explorer. You've all had this happen, they go across. What they're feeling for is if the tooth is really hard, then it's hleathy, but if it's kind of soft and sticky, that's a signal that the eneaml is starting to decay. These types of jgdutmens are hard for a new dental setudnt to make, because they haven't touched a lot of teeth yet. And you want them to learn this before they start practicing on real human patients. So what we do is add an accelerometer on to the dental explorer, and then we record what Dr. Maggio feels as she touches different extracted teeth. And we can play it back for you as a video with a touch track — not just a sunod track, but also a touch track, that you can feel by holding that repeating tool. You feel the same things the dentist felt when they did the recording, and practice making judgments. So here's a sample one. Here's a tooth that looks kind of suspicious, right? It has all those brown stains. You might be tnkinhig, "We should definitely put a filling in this tooth." But if you pay attention to how it feels, all the surfaces of this tooth are hard and healthy, so this patient does not need a filling. And these are exactly the kind of judgments doctors make every day and I think this thnoogcley we've inntveed has a lot of potential for many different things in medical training, because it's really simple and it does a great job at retecriang what people feel through tools. I think it could also help make games more interactive and fun and more realistic in the sensations that you feel. The last example I want to tell you about is again about human mmoevnet. So if any of you have ever learned sports, how do you get good at something like surfing? You practice. You practice some more and more, right? Making small corrections, maybe getting some iupnt from a coach, learning how to improve your motions. I think we could use computers to help make that process more efficient and more fun. And so here, for example, if I have six different arm mtvnomees that I want you to laren, you come into my lab at Penn and try out our system. We use a Kinect to measure your motions, we show graphics on the srecen, and then we also give you touch cues, haptic feedback on your arm, delivered by these haptic arm bands which have motors inside, and gduie you as you move. So, if we put it together, as you're trying to track this mioton, if you deviate — say, maybe, your arm is a little too high — we turn on the motors right there on the skin to let you know you should move down, almost like a coach gently guiding you and hilenpg you master these movements more quickly and make more precise corrections. We dvelepeod this system for use in stroke rehabilitation, but I think there are a lot of applications, like maybe dance training or all sorts of sports training as well. So now you know a little bit about the filed of haptics, which I think you'll hear more about in the coming yares. I've sowhn you three epxaemls. I just want to take a moment to aokgnecldwe the great students who work with me in my lab at Penn and my collaborators. They're a great gourp. I also want to thank you for your kind attention. (Applause)

Open Cloze

I'm a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and my favorite _____ is photography. And as I travel around the world, I love taking photographs like these, so I can remember all the beautiful and interesting things that I've seen. But what I can't do is ______ and share how these objects feel to touch. And that's kind of __________, because your sense of touch is really important. It's involved in every physical interaction you do every day, every manipulation task, anything you do in the world. So the sense of touch is actually pretty ___________. It has two main components. The first is tactile sensations, things you feel in your skin. And the second is kinesthetic __________. This has to do with the position of your body and how it's moving, and the forces you encounter. And you're really good at incorporating both of these types of sensations together to __________ the physical interactions you have with the _____ and understand as you _____ a surface: is it a rock, is it a cat, is it a bunny, what is it? And so, as an ________, I'm really __________ and I have a lot of respect for how good ______ are with their _____. And I'm intrigued and _______ about whether we could make technology better by doing a better job at leveraging the human __________ with the _____ of touch. Could I improve the interfaces to _________ and machines by _______ you take advantage of your hands? And indeed, I think we can, and that's at the core of a field ______ haptics, and this is the area that I work in. It's all about interactive touch technology. And the way it works is, as you move your body through the world, if, as an engineer, I can make a system that can measure that motion, and then present to you sensations over time that kind of make sense, that _____ up with what you might feel in the real world, I can fool you into thinking you're touching something even though there's nothing there. So here are three examples and these are all done from research in my lab at Penn. The first one is all about that same problem that I was showing you: how can we capture how _______ feel and recreate those experiences? So the way we solve this problem is by creating a hand-held tool that has many different sensors inside. It has a force sensor, so we can tell how hard you're pushing; it has motion ________, so we can tell exactly where you've moved it; and it has a vibration sensor, an accelerometer, inside, that detects the shaking back and forth of the tool that lets you know that's a piece of canvas and not a piece of silk or something else. Then we take the data we record from these interactions. Here's ten seconds of data. You can see how the __________ get larger and _______, depending on how you move. And we make a mathematical model of those relationships and _______ them into a tablet computer so that when you take the stylus and go and touch the screen, that voice-coil actuator in the white bracket plays vibrations to give you the ________ that you're ________ the real surface, just like if you touched, _______ back and forth, on the real canvas. We can ______ very compelling illusions. We can do this for all kinds of surfaces and it's really a lot of fun. We call it haptography — haptic ___________. And I think it has potential benefits in all _____ of areas like online ________, maybe interactive museum exhibits, where you're not supposed to touch the precious _________, but you always want to. The second example I want to tell you about comes from a collaboration I have with Dr. Margrit Maggio at the Penn Dental School. Part of her job is to teach dental ________ how to tell where in a patient's _____ there are cavities. Of course they look at X-rays, but a large part of this ________ judgment comes from what they feel when they touch your teeth with a dental explorer. You've all had this happen, they go across. What they're feeling for is if the tooth is really hard, then it's _______, but if it's kind of soft and sticky, that's a signal that the ______ is starting to decay. These types of _________ are hard for a new dental _______ to make, because they haven't touched a lot of teeth yet. And you want them to learn this before they start practicing on real human patients. So what we do is add an accelerometer on to the dental explorer, and then we record what Dr. Maggio feels as she touches different extracted teeth. And we can play it back for you as a video with a touch track — not just a _____ track, but also a touch track, that you can feel by holding that repeating tool. You feel the same things the dentist felt when they did the recording, and practice making judgments. So here's a sample one. Here's a tooth that looks kind of suspicious, right? It has all those brown stains. You might be ________, "We should definitely put a filling in this tooth." But if you pay attention to how it feels, all the surfaces of this tooth are hard and healthy, so this patient does not need a filling. And these are exactly the kind of judgments doctors make every day and I think this __________ we've ________ has a lot of potential for many different things in medical training, because it's really simple and it does a great job at __________ what people feel through tools. I think it could also help make games more interactive and fun and more realistic in the sensations that you feel. The last example I want to tell you about is again about human ________. So if any of you have ever learned sports, how do you get good at something like surfing? You practice. You practice some more and more, right? Making small corrections, maybe getting some _____ from a coach, learning how to improve your motions. I think we could use computers to help make that process more efficient and more fun. And so here, for example, if I have six different arm _________ that I want you to _____, you come into my lab at Penn and try out our system. We use a Kinect to measure your motions, we show graphics on the ______, and then we also give you touch cues, haptic feedback on your arm, delivered by these haptic arm bands which have motors inside, and _____ you as you move. So, if we put it together, as you're trying to track this ______, if you deviate — say, maybe, your arm is a little too high — we turn on the motors right there on the skin to let you know you should move down, almost like a coach gently guiding you and _______ you master these movements more quickly and make more precise corrections. We _________ this system for use in stroke rehabilitation, but I think there are a lot of applications, like maybe dance training or all sorts of sports training as well. So now you know a little bit about the _____ of haptics, which I think you'll hear more about in the coming _____. I've _____ you three ________. I just want to take a moment to ___________ the great students who work with me in my lab at Penn and my collaborators. They're a great _____. I also want to thank you for your kind attention. (Applause)

Solution

  1. mouth
  2. input
  3. screen
  4. clinical
  5. hands
  6. acknowledge
  7. shopping
  8. vibrations
  9. hobby
  10. people
  11. capability
  12. group
  13. student
  14. thinking
  15. judgments
  16. record
  17. movement
  18. smaller
  19. touch
  20. motion
  21. match
  22. surprising
  23. invented
  24. sensations
  25. objects
  26. helping
  27. guide
  28. shown
  29. examples
  30. called
  31. enamel
  32. engineer
  33. learn
  34. curious
  35. create
  36. developed
  37. years
  38. tracking
  39. fascinated
  40. artifacts
  41. sense
  42. computers
  43. technology
  44. illusion
  45. understand
  46. sound
  47. world
  48. letting
  49. recreating
  50. field
  51. program
  52. dragged
  53. interesting
  54. touching
  55. sorts
  56. healthy
  57. movements
  58. photography
  59. students

Original Text

I'm a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and my favorite hobby is photography. And as I travel around the world, I love taking photographs like these, so I can remember all the beautiful and interesting things that I've seen. But what I can't do is record and share how these objects feel to touch. And that's kind of surprising, because your sense of touch is really important. It's involved in every physical interaction you do every day, every manipulation task, anything you do in the world. So the sense of touch is actually pretty interesting. It has two main components. The first is tactile sensations, things you feel in your skin. And the second is kinesthetic sensations. This has to do with the position of your body and how it's moving, and the forces you encounter. And you're really good at incorporating both of these types of sensations together to understand the physical interactions you have with the world and understand as you touch a surface: is it a rock, is it a cat, is it a bunny, what is it? And so, as an engineer, I'm really fascinated and I have a lot of respect for how good people are with their hands. And I'm intrigued and curious about whether we could make technology better by doing a better job at leveraging the human capability with the sense of touch. Could I improve the interfaces to computers and machines by letting you take advantage of your hands? And indeed, I think we can, and that's at the core of a field called haptics, and this is the area that I work in. It's all about interactive touch technology. And the way it works is, as you move your body through the world, if, as an engineer, I can make a system that can measure that motion, and then present to you sensations over time that kind of make sense, that match up with what you might feel in the real world, I can fool you into thinking you're touching something even though there's nothing there. So here are three examples and these are all done from research in my lab at Penn. The first one is all about that same problem that I was showing you: how can we capture how objects feel and recreate those experiences? So the way we solve this problem is by creating a hand-held tool that has many different sensors inside. It has a force sensor, so we can tell how hard you're pushing; it has motion tracking, so we can tell exactly where you've moved it; and it has a vibration sensor, an accelerometer, inside, that detects the shaking back and forth of the tool that lets you know that's a piece of canvas and not a piece of silk or something else. Then we take the data we record from these interactions. Here's ten seconds of data. You can see how the vibrations get larger and smaller, depending on how you move. And we make a mathematical model of those relationships and program them into a tablet computer so that when you take the stylus and go and touch the screen, that voice-coil actuator in the white bracket plays vibrations to give you the illusion that you're touching the real surface, just like if you touched, dragged back and forth, on the real canvas. We can create very compelling illusions. We can do this for all kinds of surfaces and it's really a lot of fun. We call it haptography — haptic photography. And I think it has potential benefits in all sorts of areas like online shopping, maybe interactive museum exhibits, where you're not supposed to touch the precious artifacts, but you always want to. The second example I want to tell you about comes from a collaboration I have with Dr. Margrit Maggio at the Penn Dental School. Part of her job is to teach dental students how to tell where in a patient's mouth there are cavities. Of course they look at X-rays, but a large part of this clinical judgment comes from what they feel when they touch your teeth with a dental explorer. You've all had this happen, they go across. What they're feeling for is if the tooth is really hard, then it's healthy, but if it's kind of soft and sticky, that's a signal that the enamel is starting to decay. These types of judgments are hard for a new dental student to make, because they haven't touched a lot of teeth yet. And you want them to learn this before they start practicing on real human patients. So what we do is add an accelerometer on to the dental explorer, and then we record what Dr. Maggio feels as she touches different extracted teeth. And we can play it back for you as a video with a touch track — not just a sound track, but also a touch track, that you can feel by holding that repeating tool. You feel the same things the dentist felt when they did the recording, and practice making judgments. So here's a sample one. Here's a tooth that looks kind of suspicious, right? It has all those brown stains. You might be thinking, "We should definitely put a filling in this tooth." But if you pay attention to how it feels, all the surfaces of this tooth are hard and healthy, so this patient does not need a filling. And these are exactly the kind of judgments doctors make every day and I think this technology we've invented has a lot of potential for many different things in medical training, because it's really simple and it does a great job at recreating what people feel through tools. I think it could also help make games more interactive and fun and more realistic in the sensations that you feel. The last example I want to tell you about is again about human movement. So if any of you have ever learned sports, how do you get good at something like surfing? You practice. You practice some more and more, right? Making small corrections, maybe getting some input from a coach, learning how to improve your motions. I think we could use computers to help make that process more efficient and more fun. And so here, for example, if I have six different arm movements that I want you to learn, you come into my lab at Penn and try out our system. We use a Kinect to measure your motions, we show graphics on the screen, and then we also give you touch cues, haptic feedback on your arm, delivered by these haptic arm bands which have motors inside, and guide you as you move. So, if we put it together, as you're trying to track this motion, if you deviate — say, maybe, your arm is a little too high — we turn on the motors right there on the skin to let you know you should move down, almost like a coach gently guiding you and helping you master these movements more quickly and make more precise corrections. We developed this system for use in stroke rehabilitation, but I think there are a lot of applications, like maybe dance training or all sorts of sports training as well. So now you know a little bit about the field of haptics, which I think you'll hear more about in the coming years. I've shown you three examples. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the great students who work with me in my lab at Penn and my collaborators. They're a great group. I also want to thank you for your kind attention. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
objects feel 2

Important Words

  1. accelerometer
  2. acknowledge
  3. actuator
  4. add
  5. advantage
  6. applause
  7. applications
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  11. artifacts
  12. attention
  13. bands
  14. beautiful
  15. benefits
  16. bit
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  18. bracket
  19. brown
  20. bunny
  21. call
  22. called
  23. canvas
  24. capability
  25. capture
  26. cat
  27. cavities
  28. clinical
  29. coach
  30. collaboration
  31. collaborators
  32. coming
  33. compelling
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  35. computer
  36. computers
  37. core
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  39. create
  40. creating
  41. cues
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  44. data
  45. day
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  48. dental
  49. dentist
  50. depending
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  53. deviate
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  55. dr
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  59. encounter
  60. engineer
  61. engineering
  62. examples
  63. exhibits
  64. experiences
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  66. extracted
  67. fascinated
  68. favorite
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  71. feeling
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  73. felt
  74. field
  75. filling
  76. fool
  77. force
  78. forces
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  80. games
  81. gently
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  87. guide
  88. guiding
  89. hands
  90. happen
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  92. haptics
  93. haptography
  94. hard
  95. healthy
  96. hear
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  98. high
  99. hobby
  100. holding
  101. human
  102. illusion
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  107. input
  108. interaction
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  157. museum
  158. objects
  159. online
  160. part
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  165. pennsylvania
  166. people
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  179. present
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  181. problem
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  183. professor
  184. program
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  186. quickly
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  188. realistic
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  191. recreate
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  194. relationships
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  201. school
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  205. sense
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  208. shaking
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  215. silk
  216. simple
  217. skin
  218. small
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  230. student
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  232. stylus
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  236. surfing
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  240. tablet
  241. tactile
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  270. world
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