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                        ROBOTICS AND A. I. SEMINAR SERIES

                              Walter Light hall 
                          (new Technology Centre)
                                  Room 210 
                                  3:00 pm


                            HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACES

                FOR VIRTUAL-ENVIRONMENT AND TELEOPERATOR SYSTEMS





                Nathaniel I. Durlach and Mandayam A. Srinivasan

      Research Laboratory of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering Dept.

            Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Research Consortium

          Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave,

                              Cambridge, MA  02138





                                    ABSTRACT



          In both teleoperator and virtual-environment systems, the human

     operator is projected into a new interactive environment mediated by

     artificial electronic and electromechanical devices. The operator's

     performance, experience, and source of presence in these new

     environments depends strongly on the human-machine interface and the

     associated environmental interactions.



          After presenting some general introductory remarks concerning

     these two types of systems, we will discuss some specific research

     problems in the areas of (1) haptic interfaces (i.e., interfaces for

     manual sensing and manipulation) and (2) auditory interfaces.



          The design specifications for haptic interfaces are determined

     not only by the tasks to be performed, but also by the biomechanical,

     sensorimotor and cognitive abilities associated with the human haptic

     system. In this talk, we will focus on the mechanistic and

     information-processing aspects of our sense of touch, drawing upon

     empirical results from biomechanics, neurophysiology, and

     psychophysics.



          In the portion of our talk concerned with auditory interfaces, we

     will discuss recent work research on human responses to intentional

     distortion of auditory localization cues to achieve supernormal

     auditory localization performance.