hap·tic ('hap-tik)
adj.
Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.
[Greek haptikos,
from haptesthai, to
grasp, touch. (1890)]
The Haptics Community Web Page grew out of a discussion held at the 1995 IMECE Symposium on Haptic Interface to Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems. Chris Hasser, formerly of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (now at Immersion Corp.), suggested the idea of a WWW site that would provide various sorts of information (people, publications, announcements, etc.) to those working in the area of haptic interface. Chris subsequently encouraged our group at Northwestern to take the lead in developing such a site, which we have done. The site was developed by Northwestern graduate students Mike Brown and Bernie Reger, and is currently maintained by Mark Salada. Please have a look around!
We have requested input from a sampling of researchers in the haptic interface community. This input will take the form of synopses of different areas of research being conducted around the world. Each synopsis will serve as an entry point for those interested in the field. It will likely introduce some of the classical concepts that prevail, and highlight issues for cutting-edge research. A broad evalutation of the state of the art can be found at the U.S. Navy's Office of Training Technology (OTT).
We plan to have introductory sections for each of the following research areas:
Tactile Display
by Robert Howe,
Harvard University
Psychophysics
by Susan J. Lederman,
Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
Teleoperation
by Blake Hannaford,
University of Washington
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Academic Courses in Haptics
As a new feature of the research summary, we are listing the course pages for departments officially offering haptics as part of their curriculum. If you know of more, please contact this web site to get them listed!
Haptics in Humans and Information Systems (Vincent Hayward, McGill University
Haptics for Virtual Reality (Allison Okamura, Johns Hopkins University)
Physical User Interface Design (Karon MacLean, University of British Columbia)
Last Updated: November 19th, 2004