Haptic Augmented Reality to monitor human arm´s stiffness in rehabilitation

Augmented Reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are overlaid by virtual, computer generated objects. In this paper, AR is combined with haptics in order to observe human arm´s stiffness. A haptic, hand-held device is used to measure the human arm´s impedance. While a computer vision system tracks and records the position of the hand, a computer screen displays the impedance diagrams superimposed on the hand in a real-time video feed. The visual augmentation is also performed using a video projector that project´s the diagrams on the hand as it moves.