Project

Simulators for Motor Skill Training

Haptic Technologies:
Haptic technology as a modality takes advantage of the sense of human touch by applying forces and vibrations to provide real life-like experience to the user.  While haptic feedback has been typically used in sophisticated surgical simulators and other expensive high-end applications, AMMACHI Labs has chosen “high social impact” as a factor that guides our application of this technology. With this vision, we have made pioneering contributions in the area of haptic systems for skill assessment in India and guidance for applications such as vocational education and training, physical rehabilitation, and medical simulation. Specific research areas include haptic rendering, haptic devices, haptic guidance and shared control schemes for haptic simulation.

Motor Skill Learning:

Human motor skill training forms a large portion of the curriculum for any training involving fine motor skills. Skill intensive vocations from carpentry to surgery, demand long hours of training in order to gain expertise  and workmanship to perform complex tasks skillfully. Poor skill in the use of tools can result in suboptimal outcome, compromised work quality and additional cost.

Our work in development of simulators for human motor skill training in vocational trades has naturally involved research in this field.  Study of motor skill learning form a large portion of the research that drives the learning systems that form a part of any simulator or training courseware. The learning from this directly translates to the design of robot manipulators and in human robot interaction resulting in the next generation of robots.