Hands-Free Kinetic System for Medical Simulation

Today, medical simulators such as medical mannequins play an essential role in training combat medics, doctors, nurses, and other military medical personnel. The more realistic those medical simulators are, the more effectively the trained personnel can act in the real situations. To be fully useful in such critical training, however, medical simulators need to overcome the tradeoff between fidelity and adaptability. To address this problem, we propose to develop HapJam, a particle-jamming-based medical simulation display that can programmatically control its three-dimensional shape, stiffness, and temperature as well as simulate various tactile sensations. The technological foundation of HapJam is a method called “particle jamming” that exploits the known phenomenon in physics (“jamming”) with which a soft material that consists of small particles becomes stiffened or rigidified when the particle density is increased. The goal of this second Phase II effort is to expand and solidify the capabilities of the previous work on the particle-jamming-based tactile display and improve its manufacturability by: 1) Improving the actuator performance and precision; 2) Adding new modes of tactility; and 3) Improving the usability and demonstrability of the display.