Haptic recovery

Stroke patients who face months of rehabilitation to regain the use of impaired limbs may benefit from new haptics systems - interfaces that add the sense of touch to virtual computer environments - in development at the University of Southern California's Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC).

The new systems, being designed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Viterbi School of Engineering and the Annenberg School for Communication, are challenging stroke patients to grasp, pinch, squeeze, throw and push their way to recovery.

With a $1.8 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the team has come up with an assortment of new applications. Some are designed to make stroke survivors stack, push or pour liquid out of three-dimensional objects in immersive environments, while other tasks force them to pick up objects and move them through cyberspace corridors without bumping into walls or falling into booby traps.