Haptic Enabled Photo Editing by Matt

Prime Studios has partnered with Kettering University to research how photo editing workflow can be improved using haptics. Kettering University is one of the top engineering schools in the nation, and has recently added a haptics program and a state-of-the-art lab, with oversight from Dr. Mehrdad Zadeh. You might not recognize the word “haptics”, but you have definitely been witness to it, it is quite simply a word to describe our sense of touch. When you pair haptics with Kettering University’s ECE Department (electrical/computer engineering), you are now talking electronically controlled touch feedback devices [SWEET].

The Phantom Omni Haptic Pen provides force feedback to computer simulations and programs. Photo taken in Kettering University Haptics Lab.

But where the heck do you use haptics in real life? If you ever touched the screen of a smartphone, and it buzzed, or “clicked” when you hit a key, thats haptics. If you have ever turned a knob in a cars center console, and gone through menu items on the navigation screen, “feeling” artificial detents for each menu item, thats haptics. And last, if you have ever had open heart surgery performed by a 5-axis robot, controlled over the internet by a doctor who is 1200 miles away from you, you were certainly involved with a haptic-enabled process. We use haptics devices to add a sense of reality to what otherwise may be virtual, fully immersing a user in a world that uses visual, auditory, and haptic cues to perform an action more efficiently.

The innovativeness on the web and in photography that is displayed at Prime Studios, matched with the expertise and technical oversight at Kettering University, is really a great match for some spectacular results. The chosen topic: Haptic Enabled Photo Editing. Thats right, we are going to be researching how we can improve workflow for all us photographers (and even videographers) from file open, to file close. We must ask questions like:

• What can we “feel” in an image, and how do we manipulate it?
• What type of force feedback makes sense in image editing?
• If editing a photo wasn’t such a “flat” process, could our emotional involvement increase, and in turn our results improve?

We will be looking at how elements like brightness, saturation, blurring, and adding simple things like vignettes can be performed easier, and how the use of force feedback, or haptic-enabled devices can make this easier, more fun, and much more effective. As you can see below, were already into the guts of things, no need for explanation yet, but there is much more to come.

Haptics electronics! Photo taken in Kettering University Haptics Lab.

If you haven’t already, check out the complete progress in our Haptics Category.