[accessibleimage] Re: Haptic rendering of images

Hi Will,

> One idea for applying this to 2D haptics would be through the use of
> snap constraint forces.

Yes, this sometimes works quite well, and that is exactly where I
used the gradient-based forces for in case of the Logitech Wingman
Force Feedback mouse. However, typical images contain lots and lots
of tiny details and associated "valleys" for those snap constraint
forces, such that one gets confused about unimportant edges versus
important contours. It is probably solvable with much more advanced
contour detection algorithms that discard the noise of many local
edges, but I did not further investigate this because it is far
from trivial to design a good robust edge-prioritizing algorithm.
An easy starting point to validate or invalidate this idea might
be to just use The vOICe as-is with a Logitech Wingman Force
Feedback mouse, and import image files that have been manually
preprocessed for leaving in only relevant edges - probably much
like was done with the Virtouch mouse educational material. It
would give some indication of whether this approach would yield
results that are sufficiently intuitive to warrant the effort of
designing an appropriate and automatic "cartooning" algorithm.

> I was thinking about buying a Logitech iFeel Mouseman, but couldn't
> find one in the UK when I looked a couple of years ago.

The last time I could still find the Logitech Wingman Force Feedback
mouse on the market was with some company in France, but that was
already years ago and probably one can nowadays only hope to find
it occasionally for sale on eBay. For me the lack of affordable
devices on the market was the main reason to stop working on the
tactile extension. Hopefully this situation will improve someday.

Best wishes,

Peter Meijer


Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
http://www.seeingwithsound.com

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