Learning systems through haptic simulatorsA domain expertise approach

Abstract

Teaching and learning does not only imply transferring knowledge, but also experience. And there is a special kind ofexperience that involves the use of hand skills and both visual-spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. One possiblesolution involves the use of knowledge-based systems to transmit expertise through virtual reality simulators. Thesesimulators have to include the sense of touch, so haptic devices are needed. They have also to act as teaching/learning toolswhose goal is to improve students’ performance, so individual assessment is a vital characteristic. In order to fulfil theserequirements, a framework and the associated methodology for building haptic simulators as learning objects is proposed.The use of this frameworkreduces the time to develop haptic simulators by using software engineering and including expertknowledge as the core of the system. There are two main actors, besides the user, involved in the development of every newsimulator: the expert and the engineer. The expert brings the knowledge to be included in the simulator. The engineer is incharge of building the system using the framework as foundation. The main fields where haptics are being used areengineering and surgery. A proof of concept on surgery is included bringing together engineering and surgery.