Supporting Unskilled People in Cutting Tasks through Haptic Guidance

The paper deals with the application of haptic technology when improving manual skills of people with specific disorders, such Down syndrome, mental retardation, etc. The development of a cutting haptic system is the base of this paper to show specificity of the development and verification of hardware for the given group of handicapped users. The cutting operation is performed using a hot wire tool, which is linked through an R-R mechanism to a PHANTOM device. The haptic cutting device is able to cut soft materials as expanded and extruded polystyrene foam from 5 to 20 mm thickness. The device is driven under the user’s hand movement and assisted through the Magnetic Geometry Effect (MGE). The haptic cutting device has been used as an input system for tracking the sketching movements made by the user according to the visual feedback received from a physical template without haptic assistance. Then the cutting device has been used as an output system that provides force feedback capabilities. Finally, the system performance has been evaluated by comparing the analysis of the tracking results with the final polystyrene components.