Multimedia Gallery
Touch Photography: Capturing the Feel of Surfaces -- Innovators
Touch Photography: Capturing the Feel of Surfaces
If you can see something on your computer, why shouldn't you be able to feel it? "Touch is an important part of the sensory experience of being a human," says Katherine J. Kuchenbecker, an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania. With support from NSF, she is working on capturing how an object feels and realistically recreating those sensations so that you can feel a virtual version of the object through computers and other devices. She calls this process haptography or haptic (touch) photography, and it has many applications from medical simulation and training to online shopping.
Credit: National Science Foundation
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