Haptic desktop for assisted handwriting and drawing

This paper presents two applications developed for a novel multimodal device called haptic desktop system (HDS). The HDS is an integrated system which merges haptic functionalities and video display terminal (VBT) systems into one. It has been designed to provide visual and haptic co-located perceptual information. The first application is the integration of the HDS with a handwriting recognition system. In the second application, the interface can assist the users in a drawing task and act as a virtual guide through its force feedback capabilities; the application can read various image formats and convert the main image features in output control trajectories for user interaction.