Rebecca Mason: Haptic Modeling of a Street Intersection Using the Novint Falcon

Rebecca Mason is a senior at Mount Holyoke College, majoring in Computer Science. This summer she participated in the 2008 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Information Technology (SURF-IT) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. There she worked under the direction of Dr. Roberto Manduchi, researching different technologies that could be used to help the blind read maps and navigate independently. One of the new technologies that her lab examined this summer is the Novint Falcon.

The Novint Falcon is a device that allows users to feel virtual 3-dimensional shapes. Rebecca's work involved building a model of a street intersection that a blind person could explore using this device. One issue her lab faced was calculating the proper forces so that virtual surfaces would be solid enough to feel real. Another issue Rebecca researched was keeping the user from bouncing in between solid surfaces. Rebecca learned a lot from this research experience, and hopes that her work will pave the way for future breakthroughs in this field.