A Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator for Training Veterinary Students

No it ain't spam. This haptic cow simulator done by the Glasgow Interactive Systems Group and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (University of Glasgow, UK):

Bovine rectal palpation is a necessary skill for a veterinary student to learn. However, lack of resources and welfare issues currently restrict the amount of training available to students in this procedure. Here we present a virtual reality based teaching tool - the Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator - that has been developed as a supplement to existing training methods. When using the simulator, the student palpates virtual objects representing the bovine reproductive tract, receiving feedback from a PHANToM haptic device (inside a fibreglass model of a cow), while the teacher follows the student's actions on the monitor and gives instruction. We present a validation experiment that compares the performance of a group of traditionally trained students with a group whose training was supplemented with a simulator training session. The subsequent performance in the real task, when examining cows for the first time, was assessed with the results showing a significantly better performance for the simulator group.

Definitely a tangible-oriented design! The corresponding scientific paper: Baillie, S., Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A., Mellor, D. and Reid, S. Validation of a Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator for Training Veterinary Students. In Proceedings of MMVR 2005 (Long Beach, CA, USA).