What is Virtual Fixtures

This chapter presents an overview of the design of an interactive medical/biological training environment using a multi-modal user interface. We describe the software architecture required to develop such environment. Then we introduce the physics-based models of the objects interacting in the virtual scenes. We discuss the implementation of the dexterity enhancing training tasks combined with the associated definitions of metrics which can be used as a part of score keeping operation. A virtual mentoring agent was used throughout the training tasks for guidance in terms of multi-modal feedback including graphics, haptic and audio feedback cues. A fuzzy logic based method was used to evaluate and compare the performance metrics of the trainee in relationship to both novice and expert user.