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The Gravity Game, using haptics to show the difference between mass and weight

Haptic Simulation Collection

3 min read researchhapticsconferencec++

The work I presented at Eurohaptics 2016 in London: ten years of haptics, from sinus surgery to a gravity game that teaches the difference between mass and weight.

At Eurohaptics in London, 2016, I gave a workshop session called 10 Years in Haptics: Nasendoscopy, Surgical Tissue, and Gravity Games. It was a survey of the work I had done in haptic simulation, and a chance to put a device in front of people rather than a slide.

The Gravity Game

The Haptic Gravity Game was built with Dr Brett Wilkinson at Flinders University. You lift familiar objects in simulations of gravity on Earth, Mars, Jupiter and the Moon, with precise force feedback, and the point is that weight and mass stop being the same thing. On the Moon a hammer is easy to lift and hard to stop; on Jupiter it is heavy and hard to start. Force feedback is the only way to teach that distinction through your hands.

The Eurohaptics 2016 demo in London
Eurohaptics, London 2016.
The Eurohaptics 2016 demo with Prof. Matthias Harders
With Prof. Matthias Harders at the demo.
G. Ruthenbeck speaking at Eurohaptics 2016
At the microphone.
The sinus simulation with a Novint haptics device
The sinus simulation, on a Novint device.

Cutting virtual tissue

The video I showed is a cut-able tissue simulation technique I developed in C++ with CUDA for GPU-accelerated physics, DirectX and HLSL shaders. It is demonstrated as a sinus surgery simulation, but the method applies to any part of the body. At the time there were very few technologies that could do anything like it, including the game engines.

The video is on YouTube. It is linked rather than embedded here; the thesis page embeds its demonstration videos, and this page does not.