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Prototype of Haptic Device and Pen Tablet Collaborative Work System

Manabu Ishihara
Abstract A number of penmanship instruction systems, and other such systems, using interactive haptic devices connected to networks have been devised, and various experiments have been conducted on their use. Haptic devices utilize reactions to opposing forces (or actions by another party), and thus can be used to create systems that enhance perceptions of realism by providing sensations that convince the user that a helping hand is being provided. However, because fully haptic systems are expensive, in this paper, we report on a prototype system created using a haptic device and pen tablet, as well as a basic penmanship learning system that we created and tested. Index Terms Haptic device, pen tablet, penmanship learning support, interactive, Internet

1 INTRODUCTION
HIS the recent significant improvements in performance and lower prices of personal computers (PCs), including netbooks and similar devices, PCs have penetrated into numerous households and have become increasing integrated into our daily lives. Simultaneously, the improved performance and lower costs of home-use and portable game consoles are making them attractive additions to new learning support systems[1]. New teaching guidelines that include the application of information technology (IT) went into effect in 2002, and continuous efforts have been made since then to enrich education efforts by incorporating IT. According to a survey by Japans Ministry of Education in 2003, 99.5% of all public high schools are now connected to the Internet. This remarkable development provides new opportunities for enriching IT environments. In response to such infrastructure and hardware enhancements, more effective applications of IT to school education are being promoted and e-Learning educational materials are being developed and provided in various formats. For example, various learning support systems that utilize virtually reality (VR) technology[2] are being studied. Examples include a system that utilizes a stereoscopic image and writing brush display to teach the brush strokes used in calligraphy[3,4], the utilization of a robot arm with the same calligraphy learning system[5], a system that uses a SPIDAR haptic device to enable remote calligraphy instruction[6], and systems that analyze the learning process involved in piano instruction[7] or in the use of virtual chopsticks[8]. Additionally, since it is a basic rule of pen-drawn characters that even a slight displacement of the pen tip is impermissible, pen-drawn character reproductions must be within 1 mm tolerances and will appear out-of-balance

if drawn too long or too short. In response, support systems for penmanship instruction and similar applications on tablet PCs have been developed[9], and associated research indicates that both the curriculum and content are important factors for creating VR materials[10]. Penmanship instruction systems and similar applications using interactive haptic devices connected to networks have been devised, and various experiments have been performed into their usage. However, haptic devices are expensive. Therefore, in this paper, we report on a prototype system created using a haptic device and pen tablet as well as a basic penmanship instruction system that we have developed and tested.

2 SYSTEM OVERVIEW
As a prelude to the system discussed in this study, a prototype of our haptic device-based penmanship instruction system (shown in Fig. 1) was produced[10].

Fig. 1. Haptic device-based system

To achieve this VR environment, we used the PHANToM Omni haptic device made by SenseAble Technologies, Inc. of the United States. The PHANToM Omni is Manabu Ishihara is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi- integrated into the MATLAB/Simulink (MathWorks, Inc., neering, Oyama National College of Technology, Oyama-Shi, Tochigi 323- USA) environments, to configure a system capable of 0806, Japan. providing a virtual space experience. The control PC uti 2011 Journal of Computing Press, NY, USA, ISSN 2151-9617

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lized an Intel Pentium4 CPU operating at 2.8 GHz, with 512 MB of RAM and running the Windows XP Professional SP2 operating system. The system was configured with PHANToM Omnis on both the penmanship instructor and student sides (hereinafter, PHANToM Omni is referred to as PHANToM), which were connected by a network, as well as the virtual space paper surfaces used by the penmanship instruction system. Both PHANToMs were placed into operational states simultaneously. Then, when the instructor-side PHANToM was moved, the student-side PHANToM replicated its motions. Moving the student-side PHANToM did not affect the instructor-side device. The pen component of the PHANToM device was equipped with a writing brush. Since the system was designed for writing characters on virtual space paper surfaces, it was necessary to ensure that the act of virtual space character writing would provide users with the same sensations they experienced when writing on actual paper. The pen component of the PHANToM was equipped with a writing brush, and was configured into a system that allowed characters to be written on a virtual space paper surface. Writing characters in virtual space provided the sensations as actually writing characters on paper. In this study, instead of the configuration with PHANToM devices on both sides as shown in Fig. 1, a collaborative work system configured with a pen tablet and a single PHANToM, as shown in Fig. 2, was used. In this system, the pen table is manipulated to control the PHANToM device, thereby guiding the PHANToM and providing the sensation of writing characters. A CTE-640 pen tablet made by WACOM (Saitama, Ja-

to that of an actual writing brush could be obtained using a PHANToM device. The actual writing brush used is shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Writing brush.

The writing brush used had a diameter of approximately 1.5 cm. Therefore, if a line thickness of about 2 cm could be produced, the thickness of the reproduced line would be acceptable. The results of this experiment indicated that a thickness of more than 2 cm could be produced. Accordingly, it was determined that a line could be reproduced with the same thickness as from an actual writing brush. Additionally, in an experiment in which the brush pressure sensitivity was held constant, we found that the lines drawn could be varied smoothly. Based on this finding, it was determined that line variations identical to those of an actual writing brush could be reproduced. The writing brush has a maximum diameter of approximately 1.5 cm, which allowed lines with thicknesses ranging up to approximately 3 cm to be drawn.

Fig. 4. Measurement.

Fig. 2.Pen tablet system.

pan) with a 9-bit pen input was used.

3 EXPERIMENT
3.1 About writing brushers When a writing brush is used, factors such as the brush pressure, brush angle and, brush tip speed (whether a stop or a sweep) are said to be more important than accurate positioning of the brush tip. Therefore, we conducted an experiment to determine whether a line thickness close

The experimental apparatus is described below. The actual writing brush was affixed to a height gauge, and the position at which the brush tip made contact with the paper was denoted as the zero point. In this position, lines could not be drawn as the brush would merely graze lightly over the paper. Accordingly, the brush tip was first moved downward by 1 mm so that lines could be drawn. At this time, the diameter of the line thickness was measured. Variations in line thickness up to 3 cm were observable, so the maximum value was set at 3 cm. This process was repeated three times in order to determine the error range of the experiment.

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3.2 Displaying with the haptic device Figure 5 shows results of an experiment wherein, in order to observe the brush-like sensation obtained from using a PHANToM device, a circle was drawn at a fixed height.

4 USING THE TEMPLATE

4.1 Writing brush position and thickness measurement results Abbreviation and Acronyms From experiments in which different line thicknesses are obtained by drawing lines at various pen height positions, simple estimated values were obtained, the results of which are summarized in Fig. 6. Figure 6(1) shows the least squares approximation calculated from the experimental results, while Fig. 6(2) shows the quadratic approximated curve calculated from the experimental results.

Fig. 5(1). Thin line display.

Fig. 6(1). Least squares approximation

Fig. 5(2). Thick line display.

Fig. 6(2). Quadratic approximated curve Fig. 6. Relationship between height position and thickness of writing brush.

Fig. 5(3). Line display variation. Fig. 5. Line display examples.

Figure 5(1) shows the shows the circle drawn when the PHANToM pen was at a high position, while Fig. 5(2) shows the circle drawn when the PHANToM pen was at a lower position. Figure 5(3) shows how the line thickness varied according to pen height.

4.2 Character display in consideration of brush pressure information Using the values of the brush thickness and height obtained from the experimental results, the Japanese character was written under various conditions. In Fig. 7 below, the character display transmitted from the pen tablet transmission-side is shown as (a), and the character reproduced at the PHANToM reception-side is shown as (b). When looking at the upward turn at the bottom of the character, it can be seen that the reproduction shown in Fig. 7.3 was the smoothest. Conversely, the upward turn at the bottom of the character was not reproduced at all in Fig. 7(1).

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(a) Pen tablet

(b) PHANTom Fig. 7(1). No change in values.

hook component to change more smoothly so it can be transmitted with greater accuracy to the other party. Sometimes, however, due to individual differences among writers, a characters appearance might deteriorate. One particularly significant individual difference is brush speed. For example, when a person utilizes a rapid brush speed, the brush pressure sensitivity of the pen input may not be reflected in the output, and the character might be difficult to reproduce. In our current system, if the characters are drawn at a rate of about 1 stroke per second, reliable reproduction is possible. In the future, we would like to conduct further investigations into factors such as brush speed changes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to thank Mr. K. Ikeda of Nihon Binery co., who gave technical assistance of PHANToM. This project is supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Tech-nology, Japan, Grant No. 22500954.
(a) Pen tablet (b) PHANToM Fig. 7(2). Input of least squares appoximation values.

REFERENCES
Y.Ono, M.Ishihara and M.Ideo, A Design and a Practice of ELDP Project --- LMS, Podcasting, and English Presentation Class, Proceedings of the 5th International CDIO Conference, no.P2-4, pp.111(2009-6) (Singapore). [2] M. Horose, Virtual Reality, Sangyo Tosho(1993). (in Japanese) [3] T. Yoshida, N. Muranaka, & S. Imanishi , A Construction of Educational Application System for Calligrapy Master based on Virtual Reality, The Transactions of The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan, vol.117-C, no.11, pp1629-1634 (1997-11). (in Japanese) [4] T. Yoshida, T. Yamamoto, & S. Imanishi , A Calligraphy Mastering Support System Using Virtual Reality Technology and its Learning Effects, The Transactions of The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan, vol.123-Ano.12pp1206-1216 (2003-12). (in Japanese) [5] K.Henmi and T.Yoshikawa Virtual Lesson and Its Application to Virtual Calligraphy System,TVRSJ, vol.3, no.1, pp13-19 (1983-3). (in Japanese) [6] M. Sakuma, S. Masamori, T. Harada, Y. Hirata, M. Satou, A Remote Lesson System for Japanese Calligraphy using SPIDAR, IEICE of Jpn., Technical Report, MVE99-52, pp27-32 (1999-10). (in Japanese) [7] G. Otsuka, G. Sodeyama, N. Muranaka, S. Imanishi, A Construction of a Piano Training System based on Virtual Reality, The Transactions of The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan, vol.116-Cno.11pp.1288-1294 (1996-11). (in Japanese) [8] Y. Yamaguchi, Y. Kitamura, F. Kishino, Analysis of Learning Process of Virtual Chopsticks, IEICE of Jpn., Technical Report, MVE2001-3, pp.11-16(2001-06) .(in Japanese) [9] N. Muranaka, M. Tokumaru, S. Imanishi, The penmanship (script learning) support system : Education effect of the animation model for pen strokes, IEICE of Jpn., Technical Report, ET2005-115, pp.151156(2006-03) .(in Japanese) [10] M. Ishihara, On first impression of the teaching materials which used haptic display, The Transactions of The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan,vol.129-A,no.7, pp.490-491(2009-7). (in Japanese) [1]

(a) Pen tablet (b)PHANToM Fig. 7(3). Input of quadratic curve appoximation value. Fig.7. Change in input of brush pressure approximation value.

5 CONCLUSION
In this study, three different basic experiments were conducted. When examining the results of each experiment, no significant changes were observed at the stroke stop locations in any case. However, differences were seen in the sweep and upward turn parts of strokes. In Fig. 7(1), a following motion was performed, but neither the sweep nor the upward turn was reproduced, and detailed collaborative work was considered impossible. The results shown in Figs. 7(2) and 7(3) contained reproductions of the upward turn and sweep, respectively. As previously mentioned, the pen tablet input was 9 bits, and the system was designed to reflect the brush pressure sensitivity of the pen input. If the intended use of the system is to transmit character shapes, either could be used. If the objective is to reproduce characters with greater accuracy, a tradeoff with the approximation equation is believed to be necessary. This would allow the

2011 Journal of Computing Press, NY, USA, ISSN 2151-9617