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General presentation of the Haptic SIG

 


 

What is "Haptics"?

The term haptics refers to the concepts of human interaction and perception through touch. This term is derived from the Greek word haptein which means "I touch".

Unlike other senses, haptic channel requires an active exploration of environments and presents several psychophysical, cognitive, emotional and social features allowing an access to physical dimensions of evironements and a better understanding and control of systems.

Since first teleoperation systems and early integrations of force feedback in VR applications to the last researches in scientific visualisation and interpersonal communication, haptic research has enabled a considerable breakthrough in the field of Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), Telerobotics, Virtual Reality and Collaborative Environments (CVE, CSCW, etc.).

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The first electric master/slave remote manipulator by Raymond C. Goertz in the 50's (Source: Argonne National Laboratories)
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Force feedback system (Argonne remote manipulator) for VR based molecular manipulation in the 70's (Source: GROPE project / UNC)
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Novint Falcon for FPS games: Game Developers Conference, San Francisco, USA, 2008

 


 

The Haptics community

Today, there is no doubt that an "international haptics research community" exists, is sustainable and growing steadily. It can be described as a group of individuals and institutions sharing a common interest for haptics as a technical and scientific domain. Among the different organization, the major structures are:

  • The IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics
  • The EuroHaptics Society
  • The Korea Haptics Community
  • The International Society for Haptics

The European Haptics community has played a significant role and is today an important actor in several fields of haptics research (actuation technologies, psychophysics, applied fields, etc.).

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Virtual assembly platform designed for 1:1 scale interaction: CEA-LIST, France
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Iphone-haptics at the Computing Science Department of the University of Glasgow, UK
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Laparoscopic colectomy simulator at the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland
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Interactive medical image analysis at the Centre for Image Analysis, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden

 


 

The Haptics SIG

In the context of the EuroVR Association (2010) and following of the INTUITION Haptics Working Group (2004-2008), the European Haptics community proposes the establishment of a workspace to organize and improve the work between the different teams (labs, companies, end-users, etc.) and proposes the creation of the "Haptic Special Interest Group".

We can define the main objectives of the SIG in the following points :

  • Highlight the European haptic community at international level
  • Improve synergies between European teams (labs, companies, etc.)
  • Organize events to structure European research on haptics
  • Improve collaboration with international labs (USA, Japan, etc.)
  • Promote education on/with haptics in Europe (e.g., academic, serious gamesetc.)
  • Initiate successful proposals for European projects
  • Promote technological transfer and collaborations between Academic and Industrial partners
  • Disseminate haptics technology and applications to a wide audience (media, general public, etc)
  • Initiate collaborations with other SIGs inside EuroVR

According to those objectives, the Haptic SIG supports the following functions:

  • Provide communication tools for the haptic community
    • Website, mailing lists, forum, web conferencing
    • Physical meetings: 2 meetings per year with Web conferencing (1 within a EuroVR event, 1 independent)
  • Organize member presentations, invited speakers, etc.
  • Sponsor conferences and workshops

 


 

Further information

More information can be found in the MEMORANDUM of the Haptic Special Interest Group.

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