Touch tables have become a common interface in recent decades. However, few studies explore their use in therapeutic rehabilitation. This review analyzes publications identified through a systematic search in four literature databases between 1970 and 2023. A total of 29 publications involving three therapeutic uses of touch tables are presented. 11 studies address work on physical remediation, 14 on cognitive training and 11 on collaborative social skills. Results indicate that research on touch tables in rehabilitation is limited in quantity, but that touch tables are regularly proposed into therapy. Their use has produced relatively beneficial effects in motor, cognitive and social therapy. This review highlights the essential role of accessibility for rehabilitation users, whether they are patients or health practitioners. We conclude by presenting recommendations for research and practices, particularly around inclusive approaches and adaptive techniques to further integrate touch tables into the care pathway.

Bayesian optimization (BO) offers a solution to intractable optimization problems. Exploration and exploitation (E&E) are determined in BO using acquisition functions, in particular by entropic search. Entropy search acquisition functions aim to reduce the maximum uncertainty in the problem solution space. This preliminary work presents an approach using Renyi's a entropy criterion for dynamic exploration. We combine the entropy search in certain and uncertain spaces on the predicted output Gaussian distribution. Our results support the interest of studying Renyi's a for E&E in entropic search.

This paper describes the development of our virtual reality based rehabilitation system for children with cerebral palsy (CP). This system was designed to facilitate intrinsic motivation of CP patients for a rehabilitation exercise by integrating a gamification framework. In a previous study, we identified patient's strategy changes during the rehabilitation task involving catching. The aim of this study is to develop a data-mining framework that utilizes results from the previous study coupled with real-time visualization and data generation to further the understanding of the strategy changes during the catching task. In this paper, we describe a result of a preliminary development of the proposed framework.

As a dynamic interaction technology, haptic interfaces enable users to utilize the ability of touch to feel and interact with virtual objects in a simulated virtual environment as if they were real...

In order to extract interesting knowledge from large amounts of rules produced by the data mining algorithms, visual representations of association rules are increasingly used. These representations can help users to find and to validate interesting knowledge. All techniques proposed for visualisation of rules have been developed to represent an association rule as a whole without paying attention to the relations among the items that make up the antecedent and the consequent and the contribution of each one to the rule. In this paper, we propose a new visualisation representation for association rules that allows the visualisation of the items which make up the antecedent and the consequent, the contribution of each one to the rule, and the correlations between each pair of the antecedent and each pair of consequent.

Information about a user's emotional state is a very important aspect of affective interaction with embodied conversational agents. Most research work aims at identifying emotions through speech or facial expressions. However, facial expressions and speech are not continuously available. Furthermore, in some cases, bio-signal data are also required in order to fully assess a user's emotional state. We aimed to recognize the six, basic, primary emotions proposed by Ekman, using a widely-available and low-cost brain-computer interface (BCI) and a biofeedback sensor that measures heart rate. We exposed participants to sets of 10 IAPS images that had been partially validated through a subjective rating protocol. Results showed that the collected signals allowed us identifying user's emotional state. In addition, a partial correlation between objective and subjective data can be observed.

We propose to use constraint programming (CP) to assist the user in 3D layout of restricted virtual environments (VEs). With this aim in mind, we integrated a constraint solver, into a professional authoring tool allowing the development of 3D real-time applications. The solver is used to formalize and develop different types of layout constraints and to find a solution to a user-specified layout problem. A communication module was developed to transmit the solution to the VE which automatically re-arranges itself. Modeling the problem and finding solutions are completely transparent for the user since he/she interacts with the VE regardless of the resolution mechanisms. In addition to the automatic objects placement, the proposed system can be used to assist the user during a manual layout by providing visual informations about the areas in which a given object cannot be placed. An experimental study has been carried out to investigate the effect of the provided look ahead-based assistance on user performance in 3D layout tasks.

This paper presents a methodology for the efficient integration of CAD models in a physical-based virtual reality simulation that provides the user with multi-modal feedback. User interacts with virtual mock-up using a string-based haptic interface. Hand tracking is realized using a motion capture system. Stereoscopic images are displayed on a 2m x 2.5m retro-projected screen and viewed using polarized glasses. The proposed methodology implemented in a low-cost system, has been validated through an experimental study. Six participants were instructed to remove a car lamp from the virtual mockup and replace it in correct position. A prop was used to provide local haptic sensation related to the car lamp. Three experimental conditions were tested concerning sensory feedback from collisions: (1) no feedback (graphics only), (2) visual feedback and (3) haptic feedback. Results show that visual and haptic feedback allowed to increase performance, as compared with the open-loop case (no feedback), by respectively 17.8% and 35.2%.

This paper describes two psychophysical experiments which were conducted to evaluate the influence of the control/display (C/D) ratio on the perception of mass of manipulated objects in virtual environments (VE). In both experiments, a discrimination task was used in which participants were asked to identify the heavier object between two virtual balls. Participants could weigh each ball via a haptic interface and look at its synthetic display on a computer screen. Unknown to the participants, two parameters varied between each trial: the difference of mass between the balls and the C/D ratio used in the visual display when weighing the comparison ball. The data collected demonstrated that the C/D ratio significantly influenced the result of the mass discrimination task and sometimes even reversed it. The absence of gravity force largely increased this effect. These results suggest that if the visual motion of a manipulated virtual object is amplified when compared to the actual motion of the user's hand (i.e. if the C/D ratio used is smaller than 1), the user tends to feel that the mass of the object decreases. Thus, decreasing or amplifying the motions of the user in a VE can strongly modify the perception of haptic properties of objects that he/she manipulates. Designers of virtual environments could use these results for simplification considerations and also to avoid potential perceptual aberrations.

Application control in virtual environments (VE) is still an open field of research. The Command and Control Cube (C/sup 3/) developed by Grosjean et al. (2001) is a quick access menu for the VE configuration called workbench (a large screen displaying stereoscopic images). The C/sup 3/ presents two modes, one with the graphical display of the cubic structure associated to the C/sup 3/ and a blind mode for expert users, with no feedback. We conduct formal tests of the C/sup 3/ under four different conditions: the visual mode with the graphical display, the blind mode with no feedback and two additional conditions enhancing the expert blind mode: a tactile mode with the tactile feedback, of a Cyberglove/spl trade/ and a sound mode with a standard audio device. Results show that the addition of sound and tactile feedback is more disturbing to the users than the blind mode. The visual mode performs the best although the blind mode achieves some promising results.

We present a haptic interface dedicated to endoscopy training, where the endoscope is allowed to react to contact forces along six degrees of freedom. The model takes into account end point position and appropriate contact forces. The illusion of physical movement inside the environment is obtained by computing control inputs based on the impedance environment. The user can manipulate and react with the simulated virtual environment.

This paper considers whether a passive isometric input device, such as a Spaceball/sup TM/, used together with visual feedback, could provide the operator with a pseudo-haptic feedback. For this aim, two psychophysical experiments have been conducted. The first experiment consisted of a compliance discrimination, between two virtual springs hand-operated by means of the Spaceball/sup TM/. In this experiment, the stiffness (or compliance) JND turned out to be 6%. The second experiment assessed stiffness discrimination between a virtual spring and the equivalent spring in reality. In this case, the stiffness (or compliance) JND was found to be 13.4%. These results are consistent with previous outcomes on manual discrimination of compliance. Consequently, this consistency reveals that the passive apparatus that was used can, to some extent, simulate haptic information. In addition, a final test indicated that the proprioceptive sense of the subjects was blurred by visual feedback. This gave them the illusion of using a nonisometric device.

While active work is being achieved in order to conceive very transparent, stable and user-friendly human-machine haptic interfaces, few works address the human factors and performance evaluation of haptic devices while being used in an actual operator interaction with a virtual environment. The article addresses the above aspects.

Virtual reality (VR) involves multimodal interactions with computer‐simulated worlds through visual, auditory, and haptic feedback. This article reviews the state of the art in special‐purpose input‐output devices, such as trackers, sensing gloves, 3‐D audio cards, stereo displays, and haptic feedback masters. The integration of these devices in local and network‐distributed VR simulation systems is subsequently discussed. Finally, we present human‐factor studies that quantify the benefits of several feedback modalities on simulation realism and sensorial immersion. Specifically, we consider tracking and dextrous manipulation task performance in terms of error rates and learning times when graphics, audio, and haptic feedback are provided.