Educational haptics
Hapkit: Haptic Kit
Hapkit is an open-hardware haptic device designed to be very low-cost and easy to assemble. Hapkit allows users to input motions and feel programmed forces in one degree of freedom. This enables interactive simulation of virtual environments that represent realistic physics (such as springs and dampers) and creative new touch sensations (like textures and buttons). The Hapkit can be assembled using household tools, costs less than $50 for all components, including the microcontroller board, and is easily set up and programmed by novices. In Fall 2013 we piloted the Hapkit in a new online class on haptics; this is the ideal topic on which to launch a laboratory course within the current online learning revolution.
Relevant recent papers:
R. Bloom, Z. Huang, K. Lavarias, M. Ren, and T.K. Morimoto. "H3Kit: Hand-Held Haptic Kit for STEM Education." In IEEE Haptics Symposium, 2024. *Best Paper Finalist*
T.K. Morimoto, M.O. Martinez, R. Davis, P. Blikstein, A.M. Okamura. "Teaching with Hapkit: Enabling Online Haptics Courses with Hands-on Laboratories." IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (2020).
M.O. Martinez, C. M. Nunez, T. Liao, T. K. Morimoto, and A.M. Okamura. "Evolution and Analysis of Hapkit: An Open-Source Haptic Device for Educational Applications." IEEE Transactions on Haptics (2019).
H3Kit: Hand-Held Haptic Kit
https://github.com/UCSDMorimotoLab/H3Kit.git
H3Kit is a body-grounded haptic device intended for STEM education. We designed the H3Kit to be hand-held and grounded to the user's forearm in order to leverage reaction forces and render kinesthetic feedback. Users don the device on the dominant forearm via a wrist brace, and are able to rotate their wrist in flexion and extension motions. Position dependent forces are generated by a motor, and are felt by the user through the device’s handle. These forces act along the device's flexion and extension directions as users interact with virtual environments. One common challenge for wearable robotic devices is ensuring joint alignment between the user and device in order to avoid impeding the motion of the user and limiting their reachable workspace. For user's to reach the H3Kit's full workspace when there is joint misalignment, we showed through a kinematic analysis that there must be rotation of the user's forearm relative to the device. Nonetheless, we show through a psychophysical user study that this relative rotation between the user and the device has no statistically significant impact on users’ perception of force feedback.
We plan to use the H3Kit to teach STEM concepts to students across a range of educational levels. We recently used the device in a workshop which was developed to introduce middle school students from underrepresented backgrounds to haptics and robotics. The device was used in this workshop to teach students the concept of a sinusoidal wave. Students used the device to play a surfing game that we developed to accompany the device.
