vizHOME--A context-based home assessment: Preliminary implications for informatics.

The rapid migration of health care from the institution to the home presents a plethora of consumer health technology options.. The fit of these technologies to the users' actual task performance and environment remains to be explored.

Effects of vision and friction on haptic perception.

Objective: Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of vision and masking friction on contact perception and compliance differentiation thresholds in a simulated tissue-probing task.

Background: In minimally invasive surgery, the surgeon receives limited haptic feedback because of the current design of the instrumentation and relies on visual feedback to judge the amount of force applied to the tissues. It is suggested that friction forces inherent in the instruments contribute to errors in surgeons' haptic perception.