How Haptic Sharing Technology Opens a New Future | Yoshihiro Tanaka | TEDxAnjo

Quick Overview

Yoshihiro Tanaka explores how haptic sharing technology, which transmits tactile sensations like texture and pressure via the internet, can preserve and transfer skilled crafts like pottery, enabling a participant to experience the expert's touch remotely through an avatar robot system.

Key Points: The presentation explores communicating tactile sensations (touch) to share skilled craftsmanship, contrasting it with the well-understood visual sense (RGB color model). Tactile sensation involves multiple factors like friction, vibration (for texture), and force/stroke/contact area (for hardness), which are sensed through various corpuscles in the skin. The speaker notes that tactile information is often not explicitly communicated, unlike visual information which is easily recorded and reproduced. Tanaka developed a system where an expert's touch on an object (like clay in pottery) is recorded and transmitted to a participant operating an avatar robot, allowing the participant to feel the expert's movements. The experiment demonstrated that even with an expert's touch transferred via the robot, the tactile experience (e.g., force, vibration) felt by the participant was different from the original, suggesting the body/skin plays a crucial role in perception. The goal is to create a shared tactile experience system that not only transmits movement but also the subtle tactile feelings, potentially preserving lost artisan skills through remote experience and education.

Context: Haptic Researcher Yoshihiro Tanaka presents his work at TEDxAnjo on the challenge of communicating tactile sensations, specifically contrasting the well-established method of recording and reproducing visual information (like the RGB color model) with the difficulty of sharing 'touch.' He focuses on how physical skills, such as pottery craftsmanship, rely heavily on subtle tactile feedback which is not easily digitized or shared.

Detailed Analysis

Yoshihiro Tanaka begins by highlighting the fundamental difference between visual sense and tactile sense. Visual sense is easily recorded and reproduced using the three primary colors (Red, Blue, Green), but tactile sense, which includes texture (friction and vibration) and hardness (force, stroke, and contact area), is complex and not easily quantified or shared. He points out that we rarely consciously consider the specific information our skin uses to perceive texture versus hardness, and that tactile information is often lost when skills are passed down. To address this, Tanaka's research focuses on sharing tactile information through an avatar robot system. He demonstrates an experiment involving pottery where an expert and a participant control the robot simultaneously; the expert's movements and visual input are transmitted to the robot, and the robot's tactile feedback from touching the clay is transmitted back to both operators. The experiment showed that the participant could indeed feel the expert's actions, but critically, the felt sensation differed from the original expert experience, indicating that our physical body's interaction (e.g., the role of the nail) is integral to the final perception. The ultimate goal is to develop technology that allows for the sharing of these nuanced tactile experiences, potentially preserving artisan skills for future generations by allowing remote experience and education.