Assignment #10

Virtual and Augmented Reality can be used in many fields. The most common probably is gaming (especially for VR), but for sure that’s not the most useful. One of the best use that we can do with the power of Virtual and Augmented Reality is to improve people lives and in some cases also save them. That’s why I’m really interested in how to apply Virtual and Augmented Reality in this way, not only for fun, but in order to improve the world.

“ImmersiveTouch” is one of the applications that go in this direction and that really impressed me. Initially it was an augmented reality device composed by a display, a HMD and a hand tracking system. Now it also supports Virtual Reality.

The thing I like most about it, is that surgeons can practice having both a visual and haptic feedback. Moreover, they can plan important and difficult surgeries many times and safely. In this way they can improve a lot their personal experience and this lead to an increase of the possibilities that the surgery goes well, saving people’s lives.

The application should be very precise of course, because even a little error in the simulation (error of the application, for example when a wrong action of the surgery is seen as good) can lead to problematic consequences when will be the moment of the real surgery with a real patient.

Apart from that problem, that should be take in consideration carefully, I really think that this kind of solution in the future can be applied also to different types of medical situations, especially for training.

We live in 2017, we have the resources to change how people are used to learn. People have to do practice and doing that in VR/AR is better than just studying from a book or simulate into a 2D screen, without a strong feedback.