Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
consider something we take for granted
in everything from cell phones to cars
to video
games it's called haptics vibrations and
other physical Sensations that enable
our technology to talk back to us
through our sense of
touch at Harvard scientist and engineer
shria shasan is thinking about those
physical feedback loops every time she
performs an ancient dance I've been
dancing since I was very young the ideas
around movement and sensory feedback
have been percolating in my brain for a
long
time when I dance of course I'm
intimately aware of my body and its
movements what the audience feels
however may be limited by their
conditioning or what they can perceive
visually I am a biomedical engineer by
training and at some point I I started
to wonder can we use the receptors in
our skin to communicate in the
complexity of The rhythms that are
embedded within the choreography and
would that enable the audience to
experience then the dance to a higher
Dimension shria turned her curiosity
into an engineering problem could she
share the rhythmic complexity of the
choreography as she feels it in her body
with the audience to find out she and
her dance company co-founder Joshua
George are conducting trials at
Harvard's motion capture lab
so we're going to grab this metat tarsa
point the motion capture system reads
and Records the position of the dots
placed on Joshua in order to create a
digital version of his movements and
understand the biomechanics of the dance
great but more importantly we're
interested in capturing what's not
readily visible to the eye so muscle
activation for example or forces um to
the ground now can you flex your biceps
audience members can see the movement
but they can't feel the force of a step
or a jump if you think about how humans
interact we like shaking hands we like
hugging so being able to tap into that
sense of touch or as it's sometimes
called embodiment is a gateway into
allowing you to
be and experience something that you're
not immediately doing for example it'd
be great to feel how a dancer
moves so as you Flex the bicep you can
see in yellow the activation of that
muscle we have these reflective markers
that we put on someone we have them do a
certain Movement we take that
information and kind of convert that
into body movement um quantitative
data what we think of as haptics
embedded in
technology has roots in aviation as
planes Advanced Pilots no longer felt
mechanical vibrations in the the
controls when the plane was about to
stall so haptics were used to replace
these vibrations artificially preserving
the warning haptics is super critical
very Innovative in the design process
because it has the ability to really
blend the physical world with the
digital world in our analog world
haptics were everywhere things felt you
pushed a button on your radio and the
button went to clink and you could feel
it my brain is evolved to sense whether
that action that I've taken with my
finger has resulted in a um an actual an
effect shri's team is applying this
concept to
dance take a feel and see what you
think and the team is using modern
technology to develop it at the moment
we're using two different types of
haptics on the
phone so we can set them at different
intensities different sharpness we can
also vary how long they are we're able
to then assign a heic pattern or a
vibration pattern to that move and have
it happen at that time during the song
or during the performance they're under
pressure to work out the Kinks they're
giving a performance the next day and
they hope to work with the audience to
test the system he yeah I think we're
set for
Friday besides enhanced dance
performances sh lab is also using
haptics to do research to help medical
patients with muscle spasticity move
more smoothly they're asking if
vibration feedback can reduce the
symptoms of
spasticity a condition that causes
muscles to stiffen making them difficult
to move often as a result of spinal cord
injury or traumatic brain injury ALS
multiple sclerosis or cerebral
Psy Patrick paraso a PhD candidate is
one of shria students with spicity it
feels like someone is holding your limb
in place anytime you want to move you
have to struggle against
yourself in the motion capture lab shria
is working on a potential
solution the nervous system is kind of
like an orchestra and conducting it is
the brain sending signals but also
receiving feedback about which parts are
playing what and having them work
together is the key to executing
movement and moving seamlessly in the
world in typical arm motion the bicep
contracts to bend the arm at the elbow
while the tricep relaxes and the tricep
contracts to straighten the arm while
the bicep
relaxes the device that they're building
is designed to pick up activation of one
muscle and then mechanically tell the
opposite muscle to
relax in a patient with spasticity for
example there's co-contraction so as
your bicep contracts your tricep is also
Contracting and that causes that
movement to be
rigid so we're targeting the biceps and
triceps let me know if it's two tight
biomedical engineering requires a
foundamental understanding not only of
the basic engineering principles like
mechanics electronics and uh computer
science but also of the foundamental
properties of the biology of the human
body
step one put the Prototype system on
student volunteer Annie and use it to
collect data with a simple reflex test
we've attached EMG sensors so EMG is
electromyography we're going to record
the activation of her muscles and then
display it on this
laptop yeah I think it would that oh
yeah yeah that was a strong step two
measure the amount of muscle activation
when the device VI iates to see if the
activation goes down so now we're going
to turn on the vibration here what we're
looking at is can we apply vibratory
stimuli at just the right time at the at
the right amount and the right
parameters to relax the relevant muscles
to allow for more free
movement y all right so now it should be
stimulating on the bicep Can you feel it
on your Bice
yep yep right there all right great the
next step preliminary analysis of the
Motions the hope is that vibration
reduces unwanted muscle Activation so
they can use vibrations in their device
to relax the targeted muscles if they
can demonstrate that then eventually
they plan to build a device that will
detect activation in one muscle and
determine which other muscle to
deactivate begin boosting flexibility
two and restoring Motion in today test
the device is giving them encouraging
data confirming vibration as an
effective strategy for relaxing specific
muscles brings them one step closer to
developing a therapeutic device for
spasticity the feeling that we were able
to what appears to be successfully relax
those muscles with vibration was a very
good feeling because it means that we're
one step closer to help people with
spasticity move more
easily from one test to another
good evening everybody Welcome to
decoded rhythms the human nervous system
the first opportunity for shria and her
dance company to add a layer to the
performance through haptic feedback
sensation is the gateway to The Human
Experience audience members download an
app and as they watch and listen they'll
feel synchronized vibrations
[Music]
we're hoping that the audience can be
more in tune with the performance by
giving them this sort of understanding
haptically what the dancers are
[Music]
doing I thought it was a good work in
progress demo most of the technology
aspects worked well everything synced
and it was exciting to just see inti
people's initial reactions to it I love
this um I'm an ex ballet dancer there's
something about having this motion and
movement in my hand but I felt I was
moving along with you and that was
really
cool combining two worlds each adding a
bit to the other I would say that the
data that we're Gathering From the dance
work the biomechanics the ability to
classify movements to interpret intent
all of those higher insights uh will
guide us in the development of patterns
for um patients with spasticity