**2. Machine haptics**

In order to fully understand the potential and capabilities of haptics in the gaming environment, let us first look how the sense of touch has brought a more complex and appealing dimension the human computer interaction. Haptics was introduced, at the beginning of the 20th century by research work in the field of experimental psychology aimed at understanding human touch perception and manipulation. Psychophysical experiments provided the contextual clues involved in the haptic perception between the human and the machine. The areas of psychology and physiology provided a refreshed impulse into the study of haptics and it remained popular until the late eighties. Researchers have found that the mechanism by which we feel and perceive the tactual qualities of our environments are considerably more complex in structure than, for example, our visual modality. However, they opened up a wealth of opportunities in academic research and development to answer the many questions that the haptic cognition discipline has. Therefore the discipline that put in practice many of the theories developed in haptic perception domain were addressed by *machine haptics*.

Machine Haptics involve designing, constructing, and developing mechanical devices that replace or augment human touch. These devices, also called haptic interfaces, are put into physical contact with the human body for the purpose of exchanging (measuring and displaying) information with the human nervous system. In general, haptic interfaces have two basic functions; firstly, they measure the poses (positions and/or orientations) and/or contact forces of any part of the human body, and secondly, they display the computed reaction touch to a haptic scene that populates touchable virtual objects with haptic properties such as stiffness, roughness, friction, etc. Haptic interfaces can be broadly divided

For the time being we could argue that haptic research related to home entertainment and computer games has blossomed and impacted the development of technology during the

It is well-know that the game experience comprises four aspects: physical, mental, social, and emotional (El Saddik, 2007). It is on the physical aspects that, force feedback technology (haptics) enhances the game experience by creating a more realistic physical feeling of playing a game. This physical experience can be translated for example in improving the physical skills of the players, and imitating the use of physical artefacts. By using existing, well-developed game engine components—specifically, a scene graph library and physics engine – and augmenting them with the design and implementation of haptic rendering algorithms, it is possible to create a highly useful haptic game development environment. This can be reflected in a rich environment which provides to players or users a higher sense of immersion as well as new and interesting ways to interact with the game environment. In addition this simulated world can be used to do research on applications such as physical

Currently, a diverse spectrum of games available in the market take advantage of the force feedback stimuli effects offered by mainstream haptic interfaces. Here we intend to give a broad view of past and present developments aimed at enabling game environment with haptic augmented interfaces, while discussing the strengths and weaknesses of such

In order to fully understand the potential and capabilities of haptics in the gaming environment, let us first look how the sense of touch has brought a more complex and appealing dimension the human computer interaction. Haptics was introduced, at the beginning of the 20th century by research work in the field of experimental psychology aimed at understanding human touch perception and manipulation. Psychophysical experiments provided the contextual clues involved in the haptic perception between the human and the machine. The areas of psychology and physiology provided a refreshed impulse into the study of haptics and it remained popular until the late eighties. Researchers have found that the mechanism by which we feel and perceive the tactual qualities of our environments are considerably more complex in structure than, for example, our visual modality. However, they opened up a wealth of opportunities in academic research and development to answer the many questions that the haptic cognition discipline has. Therefore the discipline that put in practice many of the theories developed in haptic

Machine Haptics involve designing, constructing, and developing mechanical devices that replace or augment human touch. These devices, also called haptic interfaces, are put into physical contact with the human body for the purpose of exchanging (measuring and displaying) information with the human nervous system. In general, haptic interfaces have two basic functions; firstly, they measure the poses (positions and/or orientations) and/or contact forces of any part of the human body, and secondly, they display the computed reaction touch to a haptic scene that populates touchable virtual objects with haptic properties such as stiffness, roughness, friction, etc. Haptic interfaces can be broadly divided

past few years.

developments.

**2. Machine haptics** 

rehabilitation, driving training simulation and more.

perception domain were addressed by *machine haptics*.

into two categories: force feedback devices and tactile devices. Force feedback devices display force and/or torque and enable users to feel resistive force, friction, roughness, etc. Tactile devices present vibration, temperature, pressure, etc. on the human skin and display textures of a virtual object or provide information such as showing direction, reading text, displaying distance, etc.

Turning to the robotics arena in the seventies and eighties, most researchers were considering the systems aspect of controlling remote robotic vehicles to manipulate and perceive their environments by touch. The main objective was to create devices with dexterity inspired by human abilities. Robotic mechanical systems with a human being in their control loop are referred to as Tele-manipulators, where an intelligent machine is expected to perceive the environment, reason about the perceived information, make decisions based on this perception, and act according to a plan specified at a very high level. In time, the robotics community found interest in topics including but not limited to: sensory design and processing, grasp control and manipulation, object modeling and haptic information encoding.

Meanwhile, terms such as tele-operation, tele-presence, tele-robotics and supervisory were used interchangeably by the robotics community until the mid-nineties. From those terms two were especially important to develop haptics systems; Tele-operation and Telepresence. Tele-operation refers to the extension of a person's sensing and manipulation capabilities to a remote location. Tele-presence can be described as a realistic way that an operator feels while physically being at a remote site. Motivated by these concepts, the Telepresence and Tele-operation research communities developed several projects in the several related fields such as the nuclear industry, sub-sea, space and the military markets.

In the early nineties, the use of the word haptics, in the context of computer haptics was introduced. Much like computer graphics, computer haptics is concerned with the techniques and processes of generating and displaying haptic stimuli to the user. In fact, computer haptics uses digital display technology as a medium for physically tangible interaction where objects can be simulated in an interactive manner. This new modality presents information to the user's hand and/or other parts of the body by exerting controlled forces through the haptic interface. These forces are delivered to the user depending on the physical properties of the objects that can be perceived. The hardware components of this interface play an important role in displaying these forces through the response sensors to the user. Unlike computer graphics, the behaviour of haptic interaction is bidirectional, due to energy and information flow in both directions from the user to the haptic interface and vice versa.

Only recently, have haptic technologies become integrated with high-end workstations for computer-aided design (CAD) and, at the lower end, on home PCs and consoles, to augment the human-computer interaction (HCI). Effectively this implies the opening of a new mechanical channel between human and computer so that data can be accessed and literally manipulated through haptic interfaces.

Nowadays, computer haptic systems can display objects of sophisticated complexity and behaviour; thanks to the availability of high-performance force-controllable haptic interfaces, affordable computational geometric modeling, collision detection and response techniques, a good understanding of the human perceptual needs, and a dramatic increase

The Role of Haptics in Games 221

games. In 1970 Magnavox licenses Rapl Baer's television game from Sander Associates and a year later released as Odyssey based on Ping-Pong Baer's game. In the mid 1970's Atari

In the late 70's Atari released the video game computer system known as 2600 and Mattel introduced a line of LED-based handled video games, also Nintendo released its first home video game in Japan. In 1979 Atari releases Asteroids, which became an all time bestselling game and Mattel Electronics introduces the Intellivision game console. In addition Milton Bradley released Microvision, the first handled programmable game system. In the 80's the practice of selling home versions of arcade machines hits the business. The same year Pac-

In 1983 Cinematronics released Dragon's Lair, the first arcade game to feature laser-disc technology. One year later Nintendo released the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan and then become in the USA the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES). In the mid 80s Tetris was created by Alex Pajinov and also Atari released the 7800 game console. Later on NEC released the 16 -bit/8 -bit hybrid PC-Engine game console in Japan and Sega unveils 16-bit Meha Drive game console. Early 90s Sega ships SEGA CD peripheral for Genesis game console. In 1993 Atari launches the 64-bit Jaguar and Id software publish Doom for PCs. One year later Sega releases 32X, a peripheral device that increases the power of the Genesis. In mid 90s Sony releases PlayStation in the United States and Nintendo Virtual Boy and also unveils the 64-bit Nintendo game console in Japan. At the late 90s Sega releases Dreamcast game console in the USA. In 2000 Sony released PlaStation 2 and Micorosft unveils plans for XBOX. in 2001 Nintendo release GameCube and Microsoft Xbox worldwide (Kent, 2001).

Development of video games industry has also been based on a close relationship with the well established amusement industry (Kent, 2001). To extend such criteria, Kent has stated that pinball games had made a huge impact in the development of videogame and computer industry in general. In his book he assumes the position that the creator of *Baffle Ball* game David Gottlieb was a great influence in the development that we know today as video game. In the first stage of development the *Baffle Ball* game was used with no electricity and it was built in a countertop (worktop) cabinet and had only one moving part the plunger. Players could enjoy the game by spending a penny1 and get seven balls to try into scoring holes. *Baffle ball* was successful at the time that Gottlien created a company to

Later on, competition was in place, thus this industry in the 70s had five game manufactured companies to place and distribute equipment in restaurants, bar, bowling and stores. On the other hand the development of computers was growing fast from the 60s when the computers occupied the whole room to the introduction of transistor which replaced the vacuum valves and later on the silicon chips which replace the transistors making computers more robust and fast. Thus more academic society and students were involved in the development of computer languages and interaction. The first game was created by engineers at Sander Associate a contractor company. The game was created from idea of which a hard-wired logic circuit projected a spot flying across the screen. The original idea was for players to catch the spot with manually controlled dots. Over time, the

**<sup>1</sup>** A penny is a coin or a type of currency used in several English-speaking countries. It is often the

smallest denomination within a currency system source: Wikipedia 2011

designed a prototypical Home Pong unit and Namco starts creating video games.

Mac was released which is the most popular game by Namco (Kent, 2001).

deal with a shipping load of 400 cabinets per day.

in processing speed and memory size. With the commercial availability of haptic interfaces, software toolkits, and haptics-enabled applications, the field of human-haptics interaction is experiencing an exciting exponential growth.
