Haply Development Platform

A modular force feedback platform that simulates physical environments at a low cost. Adaptable and accessible.

The phrase, "learn by doing" is often used to communicate the ideal way for a learner to grasp and retain a concept. For students who learn by tactile interaction, the classroom can be a difficult place. Even for students who don't necessarily rely on tactile interaction to learn, having a tangible interaction with abstract concepts produces strong and everlasting results. Haply Robotics seeks to provide a solution to this problem with a low cost and low barrier of entry.

At Haply Robotics, we seek to bring touch to technology. The Haply Development Platform features an in depth software suite along with a robust hardware controller for force feedback applications. These tools can create educational virtual simulations; we aim give students the ability to interact with real physical phenomena to forward their education at an accessible price.

Haply’s business space is built upon principles from the field of haptics, which focuses on touch sensation in robotics. These principles became subject of development the late 1980’s, and have seen usage in high-level simulations such as military flight simulators or preparatory surgical simulations. However, the cost barrier for these tools is high, and by their nature they are not open for developers to create tools of their own. The invention of the Haply Development Platform provides a cost-accessible force feedback platform while remaining open for third party development. 

Education represents a prime example of where haptic technology can impact future generations and technologies. In the past Haply has done workshops on basic robotic concepts using the Haply Development Platform; we know the impact of touch on the ability for students to learn firsthand. Taking these concepts and applying them to classrooms where students learn anything from basic physics to advanced medical procedures has the potential to enhance the way students of all ages learn subjects and skills.

Apart from the educational potential of the Haply Development Platform, bringing haptics into the classroom primes students to interact with technology in a whole new way. Before color TVs were a common household amenity, marketing them presented a difficult problem: how do you market color television on black and white screens? The answer was to bring them to the public in accessible spaces, to let people see them for themselves. How does Haply intend to bring touch to every day technology? A great space to begin is in the classroom, where the next generation can experience touch sensation in technology for themselves.

The Haply Development Platform is an innovation in the field of haptics. We are taking force feedback technology that currently exists on a high level and lowering the cost barrier. By applying this innovation to the education space, we provide a whole new way for students to interact and learn through their devices. For example, if a student were to study Newton's Laws of motion and gravitation in his high school class, the Haply kit would allow him or her to feel the weight of different objects in the virtual space depicted on their tablet or computer.

As haptic technology is a subset of robotics, technology is inherent in our solution. Simulations associated with our Platform are easily accessible via tablet and computer alike. Additionally our production and prototyping methods make use of the cutting edge of manufacturing technology; in the very recent past to produce our solution would have been prohibitively expensive for a company of our size. Our in-house manufacturing tools include a 3D printing farm, a CNC machine shop and a PCB electronics manufacturing station. With these manufacturing methods at the fingertips of many, our Platform is easily accessible in low budget education situations.

In the future we plan to grow our production and focus our scope on software development. We have established partnerships with Robotshop and Abra, international and local hardware distributors, in order to broaden the scaleability of our outreach. These partnerships will forward us to focus on our educational haptic application development. We plan to integrate tools into the API encompassing thermal, electrical, gravitational, and a multitude of other environments. We believe these add-ons will better serve a strong community of learners and teachers.

Aside from experiencing it personally, it is difficult to describe verbally the touch sensation of haptics; our goal will be to put the Haply Development Kit in as many hands as possible. As a growing technology company, partnerships represent an integral part of our expansion and growth. Over the coming years we plan to form partnerships with educational publishers to pursue the goal of integrating the Haply Development Kit into a classroom curriculum.

Our hardware product is the best way to interact with the Haply Development Kit, which rests upon our software toolsets. Educational demos are fundamental to our community - we have already developed a number of education demos for young learners. As Haply grows, we plan to hire more content creators and support staff to ensure that our Platform remains easily adaptable for teachers' use. The initial jolt of inspiration that comes from interaction with virtual objects is powerful and unique, we believe that word of a good tool spreads and is appreciated by a community.

Haply receives hardware orders from developers and learners via our existing website. We generally average about 30 orders per month. Additionally, we receive contractual work with local gaming studios to implement haptics into their games. These two streams constitute the majority of our revenue, and serve as the foundation of our community. We reach out to the developers and learners from whom we receive hardware requests, and often find that they are exploring haptics for their own education or to teach others. Whenever possible we establish a line of contact and follow up to assist in these kinds of projects.

As a result of our service oriented outreach and breadth of product application, we hope to develop a community driven toolset geared towards personalized education for all levels. We've previously developed demos for local museums; we'd like to expand on this in the coming years by approaching local schools for teaching workshops. We expect our growth to spearhead a strong variety of user generated education tools with which to approach the education space. Through partnerships with educational publishers, we hope to serve the next generation of learners in their realms of study.

Of our four person team three of us are engineers, one of us with a masters degree in mechatronics/ robotics, and another in electrical engineering. Through experience in academia our team possesses specialized and technical skills, as well as a network of highly specialized individuals with similar pedigree. 

By showcasing our technology at conferences and events, we have garnered widespread interest from professionals with visions parallel to ours. As we grow our team, we hope to bring in the right people from this network to focus our direction as a company.

As we expand we are planning to license our hardware and API for distribution, similar to companies such as Particle.io. In this business model, a customer can purchase a license to our technology and in turn access tools that integrate haptics into their products. As haptics is a burgeoning field, haptic integration may present a challenge for newcomers. We are prepared to offer consulting services as needed.

Our business model lends itself considerably to contract work and relies on solution geared production and adaptable solution engineering. Use of the Haply Development Kit as an education tool fits this revenue model along with our vision for the future of haptic technology; we hope to see haptics effect the future of learning and education.

IP protection is something we take very seriously and are actively addressing. While priority is on our protection, we recognize the advantages of the growingly popular Open-Source platform and available licenses therein. We are working with two lawyers to submit between three and five provisional patents revolving around our product in the spaces of haptic technology and virtual reality. Additionally, our available and accessible knowledge resources are operating under the GPL license. 

Technology strongly impacts a student's ability to learn, and a teacher's to teach. Studies from Blackboard have shown that teachers and students respond positively to adding more technology in the classroom. Guiding this advancement down a path focused on a student's learning environment is crucial to the educational system of the future. 

We want to provide students with ways to learn in new and innovative ways through any virtual environment. We want to provide teachers with excellent teaching tools. We believe that Solve is an excellent way to reach this goal through the community guided resources it provides.

Our company is small and young, we spend the majority of our focus on trying to stay profitable while expanding upon the capabilities of the Haply Development Kit. In order for our company to continue to grow and accomplish our goals, we need to attract developers and learners alike to experience and collaborate using our product. Solve has the potential to provide us with resources which will serve to increase our community outreach, growth potential, and hiring power.