Petter Bi
vall
Touc
hing the Essence of Life - Haptic
V
irtual Proteins for Learning
Touching the Essence of Life
Haptic Virtual Proteins for Learning
Pet
te
r B
iva
ll
978-91-7393-341-4
0345-7524
ISBN
ISSN
Linköping Studies in Science and Technology
Dissertations, No. 1332
Norrköping 2010
This dissertation is an inter-disciplinary research ef-fort residing at the intersection of a triad formed by life science, visualization and educational research. The motivation of this doctoral investigation was the need to improve the communication of how interactions between molecules occur, since such interactions are fundamental to the biomolecular processes occurring in all living cells. Protein mol-ecules are biostructures that are vital to the func-tionality of all living systems, vital to the extent that they could be called the essence of life.
Students have a hard time understanding the intricacies of molecular interactions. The deploy-ment of haptics, that is, interaction technology for the sense of touch, has been found to be a technique that could help students in their learning.
The research presented in this dissertation un-covers the implementation of a visual and haptic vir-tual model into a university course on biomolecular interactions. The model provides a multimodal ex-perience of seeing and feeling interactions between virtual molecules as the molecules are moved with a haptic device.
Contributions of this doctoral research are in investigating how haptic feedback can influence learning and help students to gain an elaborate and biologically realistic understanding of molecular processes. Based on the corresponding evolution in the technical proficiency of the model, a History Dependent Transfer Function has been developed. This is a new way of translating molecular data into forces that can be felt, and it can also be applied in other contexts where data is being translated into forces. As part of this development, perceptual lim-its in human ability to haptically distinguish be-tween objects in data have also been explored.
Petter Bi
vall
Touc
hing the Essence of Life - Haptic
V
irtual Proteins for Learning
Touching the Essence of Life
Haptic Virtual Proteins for Learning
Pet
te
r B
iva
ll
978-91-7393-341-4
0345-7524
ISBN
ISSN
Linköping Studies in Science and Technology
Dissertations, No. 1332
Norrköping 2010
This dissertation is an inter-disciplinary research ef-fort residing at the intersection of a triad formed by life science, visualization and educational research. The motivation of this doctoral investigation was the need to improve the communication of how interactions between molecules occur, since such interactions are fundamental to the biomolecular processes occurring in all living cells. Protein mol-ecules are biostructures that are vital to the func-tionality of all living systems, vital to the extent that they could be called the essence of life.
Students have a hard time understanding the intricacies of molecular interactions. The deploy-ment of haptics, that is, interaction technology for the sense of touch, has been found to be a technique that could help students in their learning.
The research presented in this dissertation un-covers the implementation of a visual and haptic vir-tual model into a university course on biomolecular interactions. The model provides a multimodal ex-perience of seeing and feeling interactions between virtual molecules as the molecules are moved with a haptic device.
Contributions of this doctoral research are in investigating how haptic feedback can influence learning and help students to gain an elaborate and biologically realistic understanding of molecular processes. Based on the corresponding evolution in the technical proficiency of the model, a History Dependent Transfer Function has been developed. This is a new way of translating molecular data into forces that can be felt, and it can also be applied in other contexts where data is being translated into forces. As part of this development, perceptual lim-its in human ability to haptically distinguish be-tween objects in data have also been explored.