Haptics and Interactive Simulations

Following a link from Jonathan P San Diego, of London, I learned about Haptist, a user community for haptics researchers. The first thing I came across was "Simodont".

What is Simodont?

"Simodont is a high quality, high fidelity simulator allowing future dentists to be train in operative dental procedures in a realistic dedicated virtual environment while receiving haptic, visual, and audio sensory information".



"The haptics is based on the patented Moog admittance control paradigm. The use of a force sensor in the drill hand piece allows realistic rendering of drill and contact forces."

pdf brochure Simodont

pdf info about admittance control and impedance control

Food for thought:
Jonathan posted this quote of Marvin Minsky on his website:

"It often does more harm than good to force definitions on things we don't understand. Besides, only in logic and mathematics do definitions ever capture concepts perfectly. The things we deal with in practical life are usually too complicated to be represented by neat, compact expressions. Especially when it comes to understanding minds, we still know so little that we can't be sure our ideas about psychology are even aimed in the right directions. In any case, one must not mistake defining things for knowing what they are."

-- Marvin Minsky --
from The Society of Mind, 1985