Simultaneous remote haptic collaboration for assembling tasks

The XXVII International Conference on Photonic, Electronic and Atomic Collisions was held at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, 27 July – 2 August 2011. Members of the Local Organising Committee were drawn from the School of Mathematics and Physics of Queen's University Belfast, the School of Physical Sciences at Dublin City University, the School of Physics at University College Dublin and the Department of Experimental Physics at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.The Conference was attended by 566 participants with contributions from 54 countries. The meeting attracted 786 contributed papers for presentation in the poster sessions. The conference included 20 Special Reports selected from the contributed papers, and these are included in part 1 of this volume. During the meeting a total of 65 Progress Reports were also presented, and the authors invited to submit written versions of their talks (see Part 1). Of the total number of contributed papers, 663 are included as refereed abstracts in parts 2 to 15 of this volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series.Part 1 of this volume includes detailed write-ups of the majority of plenary lectures, progress reports and special reports, constituting a comprehensive tangible record of the meeting, and is additionally published in hard-copy as the Conference Proceedings.There were 5 plenary lectures given by Margaret Murnane on Ultrafast processes in atomic dynamics; Chris Greene on Few-body highly-correlated dynamics; Michael Allan on Electron-molecule collisions; Yasunori Yamazaki on Antiproton and positron collisions and Thomas Stöhlker on Relativistic ion collisions. Ian Spielman, winner of the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize for 2011, gave a special lecture entitled Modifying interatomic interactions using Raman coupling: a tale of slowly colliding Bose-Einstein condensates. In addition an evening public lecture by Mike Baillie on How precise tree-ring dating raises issues concerning the frequency of extraterrestrial impacts drew an attentive and appreciative audience.The editors are indebted to Tara Spencer for her exceptional organisation skills and support in compiling this volume. Thanks are also due to Ian Stewart for his assistance with gathering and indexing the documents.We would also like to express our sincere appreciation to the ICPEAC sponsors for their financial support. I D Williams Queen's University Belfast H W van der Hart Queen's University Belfast J F McCann Queen's University Belfast D S F Crothers Queen's University Belfast EDITORS

Haptic technologies and applications have received enormous attention in the last decade. The incorporation of haptic modality into multimedia applications adds excitement and enjoyment to an application. It also adds a more natural feel to multimedia applications, that otherwise would be limited to vision and audition, by engaging as well the user's sense of touch, giving a more intrinsic feel essential for ambient intelligent applications. However, the improvement of an application's Quality of Experience (QoE) by the addition of haptic feedback is still not completely understood. The research presented in this paper focuses on the effect of haptic feedback and what it potentially adds to the experience of the user as opposed to the traditional visual and auditory feedback. In essence, it investigates certain issues regarding stylus-based haptic education applications and haptic-enhanced entertainment videos. To this end, we used two haptic applications: the haptic handwriting learning tool to experiment with force feedback haptic interaction and the tactile YouTube application for tactile haptic feedback. In both applications, our analysis shows that the addition of haptic feedback will increase the QoE in the absence of fatigue or discomfort for this category of applications. This implies that the incorporation of haptic modality (both force feedback as well as tactile feedback) has positively contributed to the overall QoE for the users.

This paper describes an experiment that studies the effect of basic haptic feedback in creating a sense of social interaction within a shared virtual environment (SVE). Although there have been a number of studies investigating the effect of haptic feedback on collaborative task performance, they do not address the effect it has in inducing social presence. The purpose of this experiment is to show that haptic feedback enhances the sense of social presence within a mediated environment. An experiment was carried out using a shared desktop based virtual environment where 20 remotely located couples who did not know one another had to solve a puzzle together. In 10 groups they had shared haptic communication through their hands, and in another group they did not. Hence the haptic feedback was not used for completing the task itself, but rather as a means of social interacting – communicating with the other participant. The results suggest that basic haptic feedback increases the sense of social presence within the shared VE.

In this paper, we present a study that evaluates the effect of visual and haptic feedbacks and their relevance to human performance in a needle insertion task. A virtual needle insertion simulator with a four-layer tissue model (skin, fat, muscle, and bone) and haptic feedback is used for perceptual experiments. The task was to detect the puncture of a particular layer using haptic and visual cues provided by the simulation. The results show that the addition of force feedback reduces error in detection of transitions between tissue layers by at least 55%. The addition of real-time visual feedback (image overlay) improved user performance by at least 87% in scenarios without force feedback. Presentation of both force and visual feedback improved performance by at least 43% in comparison to scenarios without feedback. These results suggest that real-time image overlay provides greater improvement in performance than force feedback.

The haptic interface or force feedback device improves the quality of human computer interaction by accommodating the sense of touch in a computer simulation. A haptic device enables a two way communication between the user and the host computer. The applications of force feedback device cover a wide area such as in medical training, systems for the visually impaired, engineering research, and creative art-work. The role of haptic feedback varies depending on the applications in question and the devices used. This includes haptic as a teaching tool, and a communication aid. Despite the benefits of haptic feedback, its deployment to support interactions in a virtual environment is still slow. This is due to the high cost of the haptic devices in the market. We address this issue by presenting a conceptual framework in designing and implementing a cost-effective haptic device; building on similar concepts obtained from existing technologies. The device is developed using those gadgets that are mainly available in-house. It is projected that haptic feedback generated from the device could benefit teaching abstract concepts to students.

Signalling by innate immune cells is critical to shaping the adaptive immune response to microbial infection. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, Labzin etal reveal that the adaptive immune system can instruct the innate response to adenovirus infection. In human macrophages, antibody-coated adenovirus triggers a novel TRIM21-dependent pathway that activates the NLRP3 inflammasome and the secretion of IL-1β.

Conference Article| August 01 1989 Kinetic studies of the inhibition of thrombin by synthetic peptide fragments of hirudin JANICE R. BAILIE; JANICE R. BAILIE 1Department of Biochemistry, Queen's University Belfast, Medical Biology Centre, 97 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 7BL Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BRIAN WALKER BRIAN WALKER 1Department of Biochemistry, Queen's University Belfast, Medical Biology Centre, 97 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 7BL Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Biochem Soc Trans (1989) 17 (4): 692–693. https://doi.org/10.1042/bst0170692 Article history Received: November 25 1988 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Cite Icon Cite Get Permissions Citation JANICE R. BAILIE, BRIAN WALKER; Kinetic studies of the inhibition of thrombin by synthetic peptide fragments of hirudin. Biochem Soc Trans 1 August 1989; 17 (4): 692–693. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/bst0170692 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsBiochemical Society Transactions Search Advanced Search Keywords: AMC, 7-amido-4-methyl coumarin This content is only available as a PDF. © 1989 Biochemical Society1989 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Fortran programs for the time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii equation in a fully anisotropic trap

Interaction with computers and virtual environments is almost totally based on visual displays, along with auditory feedback. Somesthetic feedback, a necessary feature in all other skilled activity, is usually absent. Haptic interfaces attempt to solve this problem by coupling the human sense of touch with a computer-generated world. Haptics is the science of applying tactile sensation and kinesthesis to interaction with computer applications. By using special input/output devices (joysticks, data gloves, or other devices), users can receive feedback from computer applications in the form of sensations felt in the hand or other parts of the body. These sensations include forces, vibrations and/or motions. The aim of this tutorial is to provide participants with an overview of the technical aspects of haptic feedback and provide information about different haptic feedback devices and applications of these devices using virtual reality and computer simulations for motor rehabilitation, learning and teleoperation. The tutorial will include opportunities for hands-on practice with haptic devices and different environments. The haptic devices available for hands-on practice will include the Novint Falcon, and the SensAble OMNI devices.

Most prosthetic hand users are limited to visual feedback of movement performance. To characterize the benefit of vibrotactile feedback for a task that lacks haptic feedback, a virtual environment was used to experimentally manipulate visual, task-relevant haptic, and remote vibrotactile feedback on simple object manipulation for unimpaired subjects. The combination of visual and remote vibrotactile feedback was compared to visual feedback alone, and to simultaneous visual and direct haptic feedback to represent ideal performance. Visual and vibrotactile feedback resulted in improvement of most performance variables including difficulty ratings relative to visual feedback alone. However addition of sensory cues to visual feedback increased trial times and the increase was steeper for vibrotactile than for haptic feedback. Specifically, during vibrotactile feedback the velocity did not change, but the duration of execution increased due to improved performance, resulting in increased trial times. This result suggests future exploration of performance improvement and execution speed for augmented sensory feedback.

We routinely have physical interactions with others, whether it be handing someone a glass of water or jointly moving a heavy object together. These sensorimotor interactions between humans typically rely on visual feedback and haptic feedback. Recent single-participant studies have highlighted that the unique noise and time delays of each sense must be considered to estimate the state, such as the position and velocity, of one's own movement. However, we know little about how visual feedback and haptic feedback are used to estimate the state of another person. Here, we tested how humans utilize visual feedback and haptic feedback to estimate the state of their partner during a collaborative sensorimotor task. Across two experiments, we show that visual feedback dominated haptic feedback during collaboration. Specifically, we found that visual feedback led to comparatively lower task-relevant movement variability, smoother collaborative movements, and faster trial completion times. We also developed an optimal feedback controller that considered the noise and time delays of both visual feedback and haptic feedback to estimate the state of a partner. This model was able to capture both lower task-relevant movement variability and smoother collaborative movements. Taken together, our empirical and modeling results support the idea that visual accuracy is more important than haptic speed to perform state estimation of a partner during collaboration.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Physical collaboration between two or more individuals involves both visual and haptic feedback. Here, we investigated how visual and haptic feedback is used to estimate the movements of a partner during a collaboration task. Our experimental and computational modeling results parsimoniously support the notion that greater visual accuracy is more important than faster yet noisier haptic feedback when estimating the state of a partner.

Economic and Social History Society of Ireland Secretary's Report to the Annual General Meeting, Held at Queen's University Belfast – 30 November 2024

This issue of Population Trends includes a number of articles and reports resulting from research based on the ONS Longitudinal Study (ONS LS). They have been drawn together in one issue to highlight the value of this type of study for demographic research.2009 marked the 35th anniversary of the establishment of the ONS LS. The study now contains data from the last four censuses (1971 to 2001), linked to vital events data since 1971, for a sample of one per cent of the population of England and Wales.More recently, sister studies have been established in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) started with 1991 Census data and the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS)started with 2001 Census data.The lead article in this issue comes from an exemplar project that was established to explore how to utilise the three studies to carry out UK-wide longitudinal analysis. Two different methods were used to analyse socio-economic and country level differences in health and mortality across the studies. The article summarises the results of this analysis, reports on the relative strengths of the different methods used, and draws attention to a number of new resources that have been developed by the project researchers as aids to using all three studies.This is an excellent example of collaborative working across the UK, involving researchers from the Centre for Longitudinal Study Information and User Support (CeLSIUS) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Longitudinal Studies Centre - Scotland (LSCS) at the University of St.Andrews and the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study - Research Support Unit (NILS-RSU) at Queen's University Belfast. The project also involved collaboration between ONS, the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) to ensure the secure transfer and handling of data from the three studies so that it could be brought together in one place for analysis.The other ONS LS-based articles and reports in this edition largely focus on research into issues related to families and households, as summarised below: A collaborative project involving Ben Wilson (ONS) and Rachel Stuchbury (CeLSIUS) comparing the stability of partnerships involving marriage and cohabitation.A project looking at transitions in children's experience of living in a workless household and how this varies by ethnic group, submitted by Lucinda Platt (Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of Essex).An article on the effect of a change in the census definition of a child between 1991 and 2001 submitted by Emily Grundy, Rachel Stuchbury and Harriet Young (CeLSIUS).The remainder of this introductory article will focus on the ONS LS, its history and some examples of its use, and gives a summary of planned developments over the coming years. Please refer to the contact details at the end of the article if you require further information on any of the three longitudinal studies.

Ireland remains an important refuge for the freshwater crayfish Austropotamobius pallipes. To determine factors that influence their riverine distribution, forty rivers or tributaries of rivers that flow into Upper and Lower Lough Erne were sampled and surveyed. The nineteen sites where crayfish occurred had more bedrock and moss than those without crayfish, indicating the importance of a stable substrate and an indirect source of food. A subset of these sites, for which hydrochemical data were available, showed greater water hardness where crayfish were present, indicating that a high calcium water content is important to these animals. However, neither biological water quality nor invertebrate community structure varied between sites where crayfish were present and sites where they were absent. This indicates that biological factors have little influence on the presence of crayfish in a river and that crayfish influence biological water quality to a limited degree. M.B. Gallagher, J.T.A. Dick and R.W. Elwood (corresponding author; e-mail: r.elwood@qub.ac.uk), School of Biology and Biochemistry, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT9 7BL, Northern Ireland. Received 21 April 2004. Read 2 June 2005. Published 28 February 2006. INTRODUCTION The white-clawed crayfish, Austropotamobius pallipes, was previously widespread in mainland Europe, Great Britain and Ireland, but its distribution and abundance has declined in recent years due to habitat destruction, pollution (Holdich 1991) and the introduction of exotic crayfish (Holdich 1998; Holdich and Gherardi 1999). These exotics tend to be larger, and they compete for resources (Capelli and Munjal 1982; Butler and Stein 1985; S?derback 1991). American exotics are also carriers of the crayfish plague, Aphanomyces astaci, which can eliminate native populations (Capelli and Munjal 1982; Holdich 1998; Holdich and Gherardi 1999). Austropotamobius pallipes has been classified as vulnerable in the IUCN Red List (Groombridge 1993). It is also listed under Appendix III of the Bern Convention (EU/82/ 72/EEC) and Annexes II and V of the EU Habitats Directive (EU/92/43/EEC). In Ireland, however, exotic species have not been introduced and legislation bans their importation. Furthermore, although plague has been noted (Matthews and Reynolds 1990), its effect on A. pallipes was geo graphically restricted and plague is not currently a problem (Matthews and Reynolds 1992). Thus, Ireland retains healthy populations of white-clawed crayfish and has an important role to play in the conservation of this species (Reynolds 1997). Apart from legislation, conservation depends on an understanding of habitat requirements, especially if reintroductions are attempted as part of a conservation/management strategy. Within British rivers, high water quality, hard water and plentiful refugia in terms of tree roots and boulders appear to be required (Foster 1995; Smith et al. 1996; Naura and Robinson 1998). However, river studies pose a problem concerning the unit of analysis. Multiple samples taken from each river are not independent, and thus the assumptions of most statistical tests will be invalid. At the extreme, taking twenty samples from each of two rivers, one with and one without crayfish, and treating the data as independent would not be a valid approach. The present study attempts to overcome this potential problem of pseudo-replication by examining the habitat and crayfish status in the numerous rivers of a large catchment that all flow into a single lake system. Whether or not crayfish are present in specific rivers in this continuous system should depend on the habitat within each river and should be independent of their presence in other rivers. Environmental conditions (water chemistry, phys ical characteristics and invertebrate community structure) were measured at each site in order to evaluate the possibility of using these data to predict sites where crayfish should be present.

Owen Lyndon Wade