The following article is re-published with permission from the Home News Tribune


Politicians, bearing grant, see RU system at work

by Diane Herbst
Photo by Tanya Breen

Published in the Home News Tribune of November 25, 1998

Sen. Frank Lautenberg sat before a computer monitor and slipped on a black glove with thin, flexible wire rods running along the front. As he moved his hand and flexed his fingers, an exact 3-D replica moved on the screen.

Sens. Frank Lautenberg, left, and Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., get a handle on the virtual-reality glove in a demonstration of RUNet2000 yesterday at Rutgers University's Busch Campus in Piscataway.

"Will this improve my golf game?" joked Lautenberg, D-N.J., as he tried out what Rutgers researchers call their virtual-reality glove, invented to help diagnose as well as speed a patient's recovery from hand and joint injuries.

Lautenberg, Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., and Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-11th Dist., and Frank Pallone, D-6th Dist., received a demonstration of the technology yesterday as they announced a $2.5 million federal grant for RUNet 2000, Rutgers' new state-of-the-art $100 million communications network.

For the researchers at the Center for Computer Aids for Industrial Productivity, on Busch Campus in Piscataway, RUNet 2000 will allow a unique collaboration with Stanford University researchers.

Patients at Stanford soon will use the virtual hand for rehabilitation, following a routine of exercises with the glove. But thanks to the high-speed Internet connection provided by RUNet 2000, researchers in the Rutgers lab of Dr. Grigore Burdea -- who invented the device -- will monitor the patient's rehabilitation progress in New Jersey.

In addition, the computer provides a library of exercise routines and collects data on a patient's progress, such as gains in strength or coordination.

Without the Internet, said Burdea, none of this remote interaction could take place.

"The idea is that we'll take this technology and create a multiplex with many patients interacting with one therapist," Burdea said, noting the invention is particularly useful for homebound patients.

People who have pulled their hair out waiting for a file to download via the Internet can appreciate RUNet 2000's speediness. If a document now takes seven minutes to download with a 56K modem, the new technology will download the same document in a half-second.

When the project -- already installed in some buildings around campus -- is complete within the next few years, a comprehensive voice, video and data communications network will link all university facilities on the New Brunswick-Piscataway, Newark and Camden campuses.

Torricelli said he sees "the doors of this university being flung wide open with this technology," with broad participation in distance-learning programs via RUNet 2000 in high school classrooms around the state.

The state's entire 13-member House delegation in Washington backed the idea of RUNet 2000 after Rutgers President Francis L. Lawrence lobbied members of the delegation for support.

Lautenberg, once a leader in the information field, founded the data processing firm ADP almost 50 years ago and admitted he has the dubious honor of being in the Information Processing Hall of Fame.

"This is the investment we need to make in our state to keep us competitive," he said. "The virtual-reality demonstration we just experienced shows just how much our world is changing. And it shows why our government needs to invest in research and technology if we are going to keep up."

But he admitted there are some limits to these new frontiers. "I live in dread of them forming a virtual Congress," he said, laughing, "but there's no computer powerful enough to do that."



Source: Home News Tribune

Published: November 25, 1998