Virtual lesson and its application to virtual calligraphy system

The concept of a virtual lesson is proposed for transferring a teacher´s skill to a student using haptic virtual reality technology. We have developed a virtual calligraphy system as one of its applications. In this system, the position and force trajectories of the teacher´s writing brush is recorded first and then these trajectories are displayed to the student. What the student can learn is the teacher´s horizontal brush position trajectory, his normal pushing force against a virtual paper, and the distance between the teacher´s brush and the virtual paper. Recognizing that it is impossible to display both the normal force information and the normal position information at the same time, we have implemented two methods of skill display: one is to use the haptic display device for displaying the position information, and the other is to use it for displaying the force information. The remaining information is displayed using a secondary display device, visual display in the developed system. A preliminary experimental result is also presented