A visually challenged person cannot see the beauty of the Taj Mahal. But now he will be able to ‘feel’ the beauty of the monument by touching the exteriors of a scaled-down model of the Taj.
Sounds unreal, but a team from IIT-Bombay believes that the use of haptic technology — in simpler words, the science of touch — can make this a reality.

“The department of science and technology (DST) has commissioned the Indian digital heritage project to several institutes across the country. It aims to build a platform or an interface to digitally capture heritage structures and enable visually challenged people to get a feel of them through touch and audio-visual in virtual reality. IIT-Bombay is working on the touch aspect,” Subhasish Chaudhuri, professor of electrical engineering department, said.

For some years now, Chaudhuri has been working on haptic technology with Sreeni KG, a PhD student. The duo has developed an application which allows users to feel games in virtual reality — something not possible at play stations or in front of a computer.

“At play stations, we can only hear and see. But we cannot feel the force at which we are, for instance in the case of snooker, hitting the ball. Our technology allows to you to do that,” Chaudhuri said.

This technology will help users feel the force every time they hit the ball.

The IIT-Bombay professor said, “Gaming is just one application of this technology. Since we have already built this interface, we will now use the same technology in the DST project. There will be the other IITs, and other institutions as well, to capture the 3D model, take pictures, define material properties (say stiffness) of surfaces, etc. We can then build the interface, say a kiosk at a museum, where the visually challenged will feel as if they are actually touching the heritage structure.”

The project costing several crores is expected to be completed in three years.

IIT-Bombay will use haptics for another project, a national programme on perception engineering, sanctioned by the ministry of communications & information technology (MCIT).
Several application areas are being explored, including medical studies. “The technology can be used to train doctors wherein they can actually see, hear and feel the tele-operation being performed, in virtual and in actual life,” Chaudhuri said.