Haptic Feedback Sensor Suite for AR-Enhanced Medical Simulators
PI: Howell, Caitlin (Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, UMaine)
Sector: Biotechnology
Partners: Zephyrus Simulations, LLC
Abstract: Simulation has become a useful tool in medical training, allowing students to realistically interact with a simulated patient in a safe, controlled environment. A significant component of simulation-based training is the opportunity for students to dynamically interact and communicate with a simulated patient, so they can run through iterative clinical cycles of assessment, planning, intervention, and reevaluation. Current methods for providing students with this dynamic feedback require human actors (inconvenient), high fidelity manikins (expensive), or videos (non-immersive), thus, the requirements for creating these dynamic training environments do not currently meet the budgetary and personnel constraints of many low-resource, rural medical facilities. In this project, undergraduate student Daniel Lesko (Bioengineering Class of 2019) will work with an interdisciplinary team of Bioengineering, Electrical Engineering, Nursing, and Spatial Information faculty members, as well as a start-up commercial partner (Zephyrus Simulations, LLC) to design a cost-effective haptic sensor suite to monitor student interactions with a medical simulation manikin. The result will provide students with real-time, dynamic feedback while being immersed in a simulation experience.