Generic Robotics Group – We’re Hiring!

Generic Robotics

Haptics.Hardware.Software.Content.Research

Humans are physical beings, we make sense of our world and interact with it through the sense of touch. At GR we believe the digital world cannot reach its full potential until we can touch and interact with it as simply and intuitively as we do in the physical world.

Touch should be accessible to all and we are working closely with, among others, designers, educators, artists, healthcare professionals, musicians, museums, and many world class universities to build game changing tools, devices and techniques which will democratise the sense of touch in the digital world.

Expertise

"The GR team have been working with robotics, haptics, simulation and VR since the early 2000’s and some of our founding members, those with a few more grey hairs, can boast a pedigree in haptics that stretches even further back.

We have been and remain a team that takes pride in always pushing at the boundaries of what the newest technologies can offer, all in the pursuit of creating the most compelling and effective virtual touch experience."

Dr Alastair Barrow, CEO

Products

The potential scope for adding touch to digital media is so broad its difficult to do more than highlight a few of the many potential areas such as: medical education, STEM education, healthcare therapies, distance learning, cultural experiences (museums), music, art, special needs access (e.g. visual impairments), entertainment and that’s just the start.

However, the barriers to entry for working with and deploying haptics in any given area are so high, up-take has remained persistently low with only a handful of successful applications of haptics outside of academia to point to.

We are levelling the playing field when it comes to working with haptic technologies and adding touch to digital media. We’re building a haptic ecosystem to address the broad range of barriers that are preventing wide-scale adoption of haptics such as a lack of general purpose hardware interfaces, no high-level authoring tools and an absence of any appropriate content in the many industries where touch enabled experiences could have huge impact.

Hardware

Our first hardware product coming to market is SimuTouch®, the only truly universal haptic manual skills training platform.

Reconfigurable and modular, with two high fidelity haptic interfaces, a quick change tool system and ergonomics that support both seated and standing operation - SimuTouch® has been designed in the first instance to support the extremely broad range of skills in healthcare education from dentistry and nursing through to complex surgery.

We are now building out the range of different tools that can be attached. We believe previous, specialist platforms with proprietary content stifled the advancement of haptics as a technology. Instead, SimuTouch® is an open platform, meaning all the necessary API's to create custom content or new tools are available and actively encouraged

Whether for research into haptic interaction or training the next generation of healthcare practitioners SimuTouch® is unique in its performance, versatility and cost effectiveness.

Software

Toia® is both a software middle-ware layer and a set of authoring tools to speed up time to deployment of haptics and flatten the learning curve, putting the creation of haptic experiences in the hands of designers rather than programmers as has historically been the case.

We are solving two challenges in the market. Firstly, haptic hardware is highly heterogeneous, there are no standards and no compatibility. That means, a developer releasing new content with haptic experiences will either need to know their end-users will only ever have one specific type of haptic interface, or they will have to support in-house every possible device and user might have. Secondly, a vendor releasing a new haptic interface has an uphill struggle to gain traction as there will not be a single existing application that anyone can use with their new device.

A software platform and tools such as Toia® can ease both of these issues and is the first step towards bringing haptics out of the shadows of dusty research labs and into the hands, literally, of the general public.

Content

The GR team, along with our wide network of collaborators at some of the UK’s top universities, have been building and deploying haptically enabled applications and experiences for many years.

We are particularly experienced in the use of haptics for healthcare education, training and therapy, we’ve even put bespoke applications in place that were still in active use after 10 years.

We are focused on creating content that addresses the huge need in healthcare training right now but also working very closely with collaborators in the arts (music, crafts), cultural institutions and marketing.

We are always interested in working with people to create custom content (or even new, bespoke haptic interfaces), if you see the potential benefit of adding touch to your digital experience then please get in touch using the form below.

Latest Projects

HAPPIE (Haptic Authoring Pipeline for the Production of Immersive Experiences) 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.

Research and development of device independent haptics middleware enabling futureproof design and purchasing decisions for non-experts.

Research and development of device independent haptics authoring tools built on (1) to enable a new category of job "Haptic artist".

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

H.A.P.P.I.E.: Haptic Authoring Pipeline for the Production of Immersive Experiences

HAPTEX (Using Haptics & Virtual Reality to Improve Objectivity and Validity of Medical Training& Examinations)

The UK government has committed to training an extra 1500 medical students, this will bring the total to almost 7500 students per year. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates a current shortfall of 7m skilled health professionals expecting this to rise to 12.3m Medical schools desperately need a valid, objective measure of assessment which is scalable and can be standardised across institutions.

Generic Robotics (GR) have developed a hardware and software simulation platform leveraging VR and Haptics (Touch Feedback) to create the world’s first general purpose clinical simulator (SimuTouch®). Through the SimuTouch® platform, there is the additional opportunity to unify training with assessment bringing even wider efficiency improvements, cost saving and standardization.

GR is collaborating closely with expert medical educators at King’s College London to create a set of validated VR assessment modules which can be quickly taken through to integration into KCL’s curriculum and form the basis of a new form of scalable medical assessment

HAPTEX: Using Haptics & Virtual Reality to Improve Objectivity and Validity of Medical Training & Examinations

TITAN (Targeted Interventional VR Training)

Providing training to people working in emergency situations is fundamental to success but presents many challenges. The current COVID-19 outbreak is no different. King’s College Hospital staff have trained over 1,000 staff members in a very short period of time.

Inevitably, the speed and unpredictable nature of training in response to an emergency means quality and scope of available training suffers. Virtual Reality (VR) technologies (portable, quickly setup, unbounded workspace and content) could provide unique training opportunities in emergency situations, yet VR has not featured in any UK response to Covid-19 or other large scale healthcare preparedness deployment.

We are working with teams from NHS Nightingale, King’s College Hospital and King’s College London to design and build a modular (software and hardware) platform for the rapid deployment of targeted training interventions in emergency situations.

TITAN: Targeted Interventional VR Training

Meet the Team

Along with an advisory board made up of industry veterans and experts from some of the world's leading universities we are incredibly fortunate to have assembled a passionate, dedicated and highly experienced team to drive the business forward.

Alastair Barrow

CEO

What if? Driving everyone to distraction by always asking for one more thing... don't ask, don't get! Passionate about how digital technologies can change the world

Tom Smith

CTO

A born problem solver. Tom heads up all product development strategy at GR, 18+ years technology R&D with multiple specialisms

Steve Franck

CFO

Veteran of at least three careers, the last 15+ years experience working in high tech finance & management make Steve the ideal person keep an early stage business on track

Michael DaCosta Babb

CMO

Michael`s 30+ Years PR & Marketing experience in the tech & creative Industries have armed him with a unique view point and possibly the largest Rolodex in London

Jeremy Glover

Legal Counsel

Cool, calm and consistently collected. Jeremy advises businesses on everything from structure and compliance through to pay and incentives. Make sure you're on his side of the table!

Chris Byrne

Senior Mechanical Engineer

Creative and experienced engineer with deep knowledge of medical robotics and the commercial development pipeline

Richard Piskorz

Environment Artist

Geek and nerd by trade but gamer by choice. Passionate about game development and VR simulations. Always keen to learn new techniques and share knowledge. Favourite dev phrase “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature”.

Positions Open

We're building the GR team right now, get in touch if you or anyone you know wants to join us for the ride!

Contact us

Get in touch, we're always keen to talk all things haptics

E-mail: Info@GenericRobotics.com