In spite of the availability of journey planners, too many occasional travellers are distressed when facing the complexity of public transportation networks in large cities. So are regular travellers in case of unexpected perturbations. The haptic modality offers a discrete, eyes-free and ear-free channel of communication that can provide useful information to assist users in their travel. This paper presents the metaphor-based and user-centric methodology used to develop the haptic interaction (hardware and haptic patterns). It led to the design of haptic patterns based on user requirements and tested with a custom tactile wrist bracelet. The evaluation shows that patterns were very well recognized in mobility with limited training and reached a good satisfaction level, thus validating the methodology grounded on metaphors and participatory design. Moreover, the results pointed out user differences in perceiving patterns and raised the need to tune the patterns according to the users' choice.

Multimodal VR training platforms appear as a very promising complement to traditional learning methods for the transfer of skills. The environment is fully controlled and the content of the application, as well as the feedbacks, can be tuned to the performances and progress of the user. The efficiency of this approach depends however on the ability to realistically reproduce the situations encountered in the real world. If not, users could develop false perception-action loops or illusionary conjunctions. This would be detrimental for the transfer of the training to the real world. Our institute, the Lab of applied research on Software-Intensive Technologies from the French Atomic Energy Commission, CEA, LIST, is currently developing such a platform for the training of maxillo facial surgery. As no existing haptic device fits the requirements of this application, we specifically developed a new interface. This paper presents its specification, design and performances.

The paper describes the requirements specification process involved in the design of a Virtual Reality trainer for Epker maxillo-facial surgery. This surgery is considered as very delicate and difficult to teach. Vision guided movements are very limited and haptic sense is largely used. The user-centered methodology and the first experiments designed to develop the training platform are presented. Finally the Virtual training platform is sketched out.

This paper describes a set of visual cues of contact designed to improve the interactive manipulation of virtual objects in industrial assembly/maintenance simulations. These visual cues display information of proximity, contact and effort between virtual objects when the user manipulates a part inside a digital mock-up. The set of visual cues encloses the apparition of glyphs (arrow, disk, or sphere) when the manipulated object is close or in contact with another part of the virtual environment. Light sources can also be added at the level of contact points. A filtering technique is proposed to decrease the number of glyphs displayed at the same time. Various effects--such as change in color, change in size, and deformation of shape- can be applied to the glyphs as a function of proximity with other objects or amplitude of the contact forces. A preliminary evaluation was conducted to gather the subjective preference of a group of participants during the simulation of an automotive assembly operation. The collected questionnaires showed that participants globally appreciated our visual cues of contact. The changes in color appeared to be preferred concerning the display of distances and proximity information. Size changes and deformation effects appeared to be preferred in terms of perception of contact forces between the parts. Last, light sources were selected to focus the attention of the user on the contact areas.

The paper describes the HOMERE system: a multimodal system dedicated to visually impaired people to explore and navigate inside virtual environments. The system addresses three main applications: preparation for the visit of an existing site, training for the use of a blind cane, and ludic exploration of virtual worlds. The HOMERE system provides the user with different sensations when navigating inside a virtual world: a force feedback corresponding to the manipulation of a virtual blind cane, a thermal feedback corresponding to the simulation of a virtual sun, and an auditory feedback in spatialized conditions corresponding to the ambient atmosphere and specific events in the simulation. A visual feedback of the scene is also provided to enable sighted people to follow the navigation of the main user. HOMERE has been tested by several visually impaired people who were all confident about the potential of this prototype.