Workshop on healthcare robotics and virtual reality: standards and best practices
17 May 2022, 8:45 am – 6:00 pm, Donostia-San Sebastián (Spain) and online
The event had two parallel workshop sessions. One session was on virtual reality and haptic feedback, and another session on standards and best practices in healthcare robotics.
International experts from the universities of Genova and Aalborg, the research centres TECNALIA and Inria, and others shared their knowledge and experiences of the use of new interfaces for different applications. Dr. Patrick Courtney and Dr. Diego Torricelli gave talks on best practices and standards to be applied on the development of healthcare robotics technologies, followed by an open discussion on healthcare robotics technologies with the audience.
After the sessions the audience who had come to Donostia-San Sebastián interacted with the TACTILITY system and experienced some demonstrations of technologies developed by TECNALIA’s Neuroengineering and Medical Robotics departments. Moreover, there were opportunities for networking including face-to-face meetings with the experts.
7-9 July 2021 – TACTILITY at the exhibition “Laval Virtual”
Visitors of Europe’s first VR/AR exhibition “Laval Virtual” could experience the TACTILITY demonstration at Immersion’s booth (physical event: Booth #B4 Hall B; virtual event: C40 – Hall 1) in the French town of Laval (Mayenne) for the 7th to the 9th of July 2021.
According to the organizers, the event was joined by 5,000 visitors , 150 exhibitors, and 130 speakers from 30 nationalities (source and more information).
During the event 148 people visited the TACTILITY space and 56 people tested the demonstrators.
A team of TECNALIA Serbia supported Immersion in setting-up the Beta demonstrator and showing the forest scenario.
The next photograph shows a visitor of Laval Virtual Europe testing the virtual reality scenario of falling raindrops in a forest.
27 May 2020 – Webinar “Sensory feedback technologies for prosthetics and extended reality”
In this webinar Thierry Keller and Matija Štrbac from TECNALIA introduced the participants into the world of high density tactile feedback that can be provided by means of a multi-channel electrical stimulation. Results from previous studies, where electrotactile feedback was investigated, were presented in the context of myoelectric prostheses. From these results generalized conclusions were extracted in order to outline how selective sensory stimulation technology paves the way for more general applications like extended reality.
Key conclusions:
- electrotactile stimulation can become a relatively high-bandwidth information channel;
- it can present multi-variable information with clever coding schemes;
- this type of feedback can be used in closed loop by the subject and
- there is a short term and long term learning effect ensuring improvements in closed loop and use of this feedback channel.
Novel applications of high density electrotactile feedback that TECNALIAis currently investigating in active H2020 projects were presented in order to give an overview of possible interesting use cases for future use of this technology.
The webinar was aimed for developers and companies working on VR/AR/MR, myoelectric, prosthetics, tele robotics and haptics, and wearable health monitors.
11-12 March 2020 – First end-user workshop
The French TACTILITY partner IMMERSION, supported by other members of the project consortium, organized a first end-user workshop in Paris, France, on March 11th and 12th, 2020.
The objective of the event was to get in four two-hour sessions an early feedback from end users on the first prototypes, in particular about their impressions on the perception and “feeling” of such electro-tactile feedback and on its usefulness. Moreover, the event aimed at communicating the project and its progress to the XR community.
More than 100 people from over 50 companies – SMEs and large enterprises from manufacturers, military, aeronautics and space – and 10 public institutions registered to take part in the event. Several journalists from the media took part too.
