We are fortunate to be tackling the global challenge that COVID-19 presents at a time when technology can provide high-fidelity, real-time, visual, and auditory information at scale; the 'Zoom-call' is essential to daily activity. A particular challenge of remote working is collaborating when direct touch -- either between people or via shared objects and spaces -- is an essential component, whether for medicine, communication, teaching, or design. For the sight-impaired community, many aspects of education, such as art and design courses, are exclusively a "hand's-on" activity. Sharing and communicating design ideas is almost impossible without the ability to "visualize" the creation and for the sight-impaired user to visualize through touch and sound. This means, that in an exclusively audio-visual online world, there is no provision for the sight-impaired to access education which requires sharing and collaborating with 2D or 3D design process, effectively cutting this community off from the benefits of online, digital interaction, that others in the education system take for granted. Indeed, the pace of change is so fast now, traditional, in-person collaborative education spaces are disappearing altogether. We believe there is the opportunity to take state of the art immersive, haptic (touch) technologies to solve challenges in other domains e.g. education and the creative industries, and apply them to create touch-enabled, online digital "maker spaces" aimed at provisioning remote learners with an entirely new platform for education in the disciplines of arts, crafts, design, and engineering. This project will lay the groundwork for addressing this substantial but crucial challenge by working closely with a broad range of stakeholders from the sight-impaired and creative design communities. From this project, we can better understand their current behaviors and how their needs would map onto an online, digital equivalent. We will balance this subjective approach with a more objective investigation into the practicalities by taking an existing, proven technology stack that is being used to experiment with shared, interaction with real-time touch feedback and adjusting it sufficiently to allow designers to experience what a collaborative, online 3D touch-enabled design space might be like. We will combine these two strands to form a clear understanding of a strategy to go forward and address the exciting but substantial challenge of opening the digital collaborative experience, not just the sight-impaired, but any design practitioner who would benefit from the internet where touch is not as well provisioned as sight and sound today.

"The sense of touch is our physical connection to the world around us. Haptic technology recreates our sense of touch for the digital world. Haptics in the creative industries has primarily been applied as vibration in computer game feedback and in other niche industry areas (surgical training, flight simulators). As the necessity for touch in immersive experiences becomes clear, interest in haptics is rising. ""HAPPIE"" (**H**aptic **A**uthoring **P**ipeline for the **P**roduction of **I**mmersive **E**xperiences) will enable haptic content to be created faster and more efficiently and provide the software infrastructure to allow smooth and reliable content distribution. HAPPIE will address 3 barriers to enable/accelerate haptics uptake into UK multi-£Bn creative industries. 1.Research and development of device independent haptics middleware enabling futureproof design and purchasing decisions for non-experts. 2.Research and development of device independent haptics authoring tools built on (1) to enable a new category of job ""Haptic artist"". 3.Research and development of a diverse selection of exemplar haptic demonstrations using (1) and (2) above in AR/VR/XR. To inform development and validate the outcome of (1) and (2) and to inspire the UK creative industries as to haptics' wider potential."

Computers are often used to allow students to experiment with concept. However the interactions are essentially on a flat touch interface such as the Apple iphone (often considered as the state-of-the-art). In contrast we live in a 3D world so, for example, when we chop a carrot, each hand needs to control spatial forces, torques, positions and orientation. Representing similar activities in computer simulations has largely been restricted to medical education where a surgeon can practice their skills in a virtual world before he or she is allowed near a patient. Recently work has showed the need for a high quality haptic device in education and Generic Robotics has demonstrated how this can be achieved at an acceptable cost. Success of such a haptic device would enhance scientific education in UK schools and universities as well as creating opportunities for other UK business.

Haptics (touch interaction with computers) is an emerging technology which has great potential to revolutionise clinical training by allowing trainees to practice procedures in a reslistic way, repeatedly and a safely. Generic Robotics is developing haptically enabled simulation for clinical training and with innovateUK support is bring products to market. The study is an oportunity to test the feasibility of applying a new type of control system to our haptic interfaces which, if successful, has the potential to significantly widen the the potential uses for our technology as well as making uptake of clinical training a much more viable prospect for training institutions world wide.

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