The pointing operation using a mouse is widely implemented as a method for an operator to intuitively operate a pointer on a display. However, the dynamic characteristics of the pointing operation and pointer movement, such as inertia and viscosity, cannot be adjusted using ordinary pointing devices. As an alternative to a mouse pointing system, in this study, we propose a novel haptic pointing system in which the dynamic characteristics of the pointing operation and pointer movement can be adjusted using a robot manipulator under mechanical variable admittance control. The dynamic characteristics of the robot motion and pointer movement are varied sequentially during the pointing operation by varying the inertial and viscosity parameters of the proposed admittance control strategy using a mechanical device attached to the robot manipulator. The experiment was conducted to reveal the effectiveness of adjusting the pointer movement dynamics by modifying the pointer movement control loop and the ratio of the operating force with respect to the amount of pointer movement. The experimental results demonstrated that the performance of the pointing operation was improved by appropriately adjusting the pointer movement dynamics.

Development of Haptic Pointing Devices Under the Variable Admittance Control Theory

Sixth sense can be defined as a wearable gestural interface that augments our physical world with the digital information and also lets us communicate with this information using natural hand gestures. Without any mechanical means humans can interface with the machine (HMI) and interact with them. As we know today, human- machine interaction is very important aspect for user friendliness. Most of the gadgets today use touch screen technology, but this is too often nowadays. [3] Till now everybody is using mouse to operate computers, but surveys have found that using mouse continuously can cause various health issues like carpel tunnel syndromes, repeated motion injuries etc. Also due to the short wire the area of reach is limited. People with crippled hands or fingers are not able to use computers as they cannot hold the mouse or control a touch pad. Considering these problems we put forth the idea of “FINGER CURSOR: SIXTH SENSE TECHNOLOGY”, where you don't need to touch the screen or hold the mouse but can control the cursor by moving fingers in the atmosphere. Here we use a webcam as hardware and MATLAB as software. We implement our project using RGB (RED, GREEN, BLUE) caps. The computer interprets these caps and we can move the cursor accordingly. We capture real time videos which are converted into frames processed by extracting its RGB components, gray scale, binary and further evaluating its centroid. The mouse movements are carried out using the Robotic Class of Java. We also add features like screenshot and right click operation.

G. Sowrabiya

Papers

A paradigm of Sixth Sense: Finger Cursor