**7.2 Education**

230 Haptics Rendering and Applications

According to a definition stated by the people on the Serious Games initiative, started in 2002 by Ben Sawyer and others (Serious Game Initiative, 2011), a serious game can be

Serious games have been developed for many areas, including education, government, military, corporate, healthcare, politics, religion and arts. Haptics technology has been present to different extent in the majority of these areas. However, we argue that two of the most prominent serious games application areas where the advantages of haptic technology

In this particular area there has been great interest in research how computer haptics technology can assist in rehabilitation process of people who has had some damage to their motor skills, while playing a game. The combination of the properties inherent to computer haptics (force and tactile feedback) with the appealing and motivating factor offered by Virtual Environments have provided a framework for the development of various

Haptic Hand writing sessions and Ten Pin Bowling are two examples of haptic assisted game applications developed by Xu and others at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in China. Their Ten Pin Bowling is intended for training of the motor function of post-stroke patients, based on Virtual Reality. They also demonstrate that haptic based hand writing is an efficient way to improve motor skills, postural stability, control and hand

Jack and others worked on serious games rehabilitation using a haptic glove. In their work, the interaction with a virtual environment is enabled by using a CyberGlove and a Rutgers Master II-ND (RMII) force feedback glove. The Virtual Environment was designed to promote the training rehabilitation of a specific parameter of hand movement: range, speed, fractionation or strength. Their system would adapt to the level of rehabilitation achieved by

Similarly Huber and collaborators developed a home based tele-rehabilitation system for children with Hemiplegia. They made modifications to a play station game console to support the use of a haptic glove and their custom made virtual environment game. The game consisted in making specific hand movements to scare away butterflies that would

Broeren et al. Studied the effects of virtual reality and haptics in stroke rehabilitation by using a VR station loaded with a library of games and a hand held haptic stylus device. User interacted with the virtual objects of the games, while the workstation collected data about the 3D hand movements of the patients. They found that the enhanced rehabilitation

*"applications of interactive technology that extend far beyond the traditional videogame market, including: training, policy exploration, analytics, visualization, simulation, education, health,* 

defined as follows:

*and therapy."* 

**7.1 Healthcare** 

to eye coordination (Xu et al, 2010).

the patient (Jack et al. 2001).

appear on the virtual environment (Huber et al. 2008).

experience was highly motivational to the patients (Broeren et al. 2008).

can really be appreciated are healthcare and education.

rehabilitation systems that often involve the patient, and the therapists.

In the education field, most of the work has been towards providing a more immersive and hands-on approach to learning class content. In particular chemistry is one of the subjects often targeted thru haptic assisted learning tools (Fjeld and Voegtli, 2002).

As a good example, Sato and others designed a haptic grip and an interactive system with haptic interaction as a teaching aid. They focused on the interaction between two water molecules by constructing an environment to feel Van der Waals force as well as electrostatic force with haptic interaction (Sato et al. 2008). In a similar way, Comai and collaborators propose a framework for the implementation of haptic bases systems for chemistry education (Comai et al 2010).

A second point of interest for haptics in education is that of learning hand writing skills. Eid and others seveloped a multimedia system for learning hand writing in different languages. The system is based on a haptic stylus controlled by software in such a way that it can guide the movement of the learner in an analogous way that a teacher would hold his/her hand. The system supports various languages including Arabic and Japanese. The amount of strict guidance of the system can be adjusted so that overtime the user makes the writing by him/her self (Eid et al. 2007).

In a similar work, kindergarten children were subject to hand writing training using a Visuo-Haptic device to increase the fluency of handwriting production of cursive letters. Forty two children participated in the experiment that showed that the fluency of handwriting production for all letters was higher after the training with the tool than those children which were not subject to it (Palluel-Germain et al., 2007).
