Haptic Intelligence Keeping in Touch with Research at World Haptics 2023

The First In-Person Conference for Many

This conference marked a new experience for many. Several members of the Haptic Intelligence team had never before attended an in-person conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some WHC workshops had hybrid components, but the rest of the conference was held fully in person. Iris Andrussow, a Ph.D. student in HI and IMPRS-IS, reflecting on her first in-person haptics conference, said, “I enjoyed having an in-person conference, simply because it offers many more opportunities to engage with fellow researchers and start interesting conversations. So much networking is done in the lunch queue!” Beyond the positive social connections, in-person conferences are particularly important in haptics because they allow researchers to show and experience hands-on demonstrations.

Kicking off with Workshops on Touch, Perception, Commercializing, and Haptic Prostheses

Pre-conference activities began on Monday, July 8, with full and half-day workshops on topics including multisensory cutaneous displays, industry applications of vibrotactile technology, and the ethics of social and affective touch interactions. Haptic Intelligence alumna Dr. Hasti Seifi, now an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, organized a workshop on “Exploring Material Experiences Across Haptic Technologies.” Another lab postdoc alumnus, Dr. Jeremy Brown, now Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, organized and led a workshop that included users of upper-limb prostheses in order to close the gap between researchers and prosthesis users through human-centered-design.

Additionally, Dr. Vardar and Dr. Kuchenbecker spoke in a workshop, “From Academia to Industry: Applications of Vibrotactile Technology.” Dr. Vardar discussed her former postdoctoral research in the HI department and the new work she is doing as a professor at TU Delft. Katherine presented research projects her team has pursued in vibrotactile technology since she herself was a doctoral student, involving both teleoperation and virtual surfaces; the HI team showed demonstrations from four of these projects during this workshop. Finally, Dr. David Gueorguiev, a part-time research scientist in HI, gave a workshop presentation discussing finger deformations and how perception is connected to the mechanical properties of the finger.

After workshops, the conference started with an opening social event at the beautiful TU Delft Botanical Gardens, showcasing local brews, compelling conversations, and many reunions between current members and alumni of the Haptic Intelligence Department.

Papers, Presentations, and Plenaries:

The conference showcased three fascinating plenary speakers: Professor Tamar Makin from Cambridge University, Professor Hiroyuki Shinoda from the University of Tokyo, and Professor Hong Z. Tan from Purdue University.

HI Ph.D. student Yijie Gong presented her technical paper entitled Naturalistic Vibrotactile Feedback Could Facilitate Telerobotic Assembly on Construction Sites; her co-authors were HI Senior Research Engineer Dr. Bernard Javot, University of Stuttgart Ph.D. student Anja Lauer, University of Stuttgart Professor Dr. Oliver Sawodny, and Dr. Kuchenbecker. This year marked a new type of presentation mode as those with accepted papers had the choice of poster presentations or 10-minute talks.

Two long ToH articles that the lab recently published were presented at the conference as posters. Current HI postdoctoral researchers Dr. Ben Richardson and Dr. Vardar showed their paper entitled Learning to Feel Textures: Predicting Perceptual Similarities from Unconstrained Finger-Surface Interactions, which was co-authored by Professor Christian Wallraven from Korea University and Dr. Kuchenbecker. Additionally, Dr. Hojin Lee, a postdoctoral alumnus of HI, presented part of his postdoctoral research in a ToH paper entitled Perceptual Space of Algorithms for Three-to-One Dimensional Reduction of Realistic Vibrations, co-authored by postdoctoral alumnus Dr. Gunhyuk Park, now an Assistant Professor at GIST in South Korea, intern alumnus Güney Tombak, now a doctoral researcher at EPFL in Switzerland, and Dr. Kuchenbecker.

There were numerous other presentations, and for the in-person presentations, each session had a session chair. Dr. Kuchenbecker co-chaired a session on haptic devices and sensors, and Dr. Giulia Ballardini, a current postdoctoral researcher in HI, co-chaired the first oral session on the topic of haptic perception.

Plenty of Posters to Go Around

Before traveling to Delft, the department loaded up a van full of equipment and posters for the team’s hands-on demonstrations and poster presentations. Many of these posters were exhibiting Work-In-Progress (WIP) papers. These are one-page submissions that allow researchers to present work that is not yet complete in order to get feedback from the haptics community on progress and next steps. In total, six WIP papers were submitted by members of the HI department and Dr. Kuchenbecker; 100% of these WIP papers were accepted. Presentations included projects led by postdoctoral researchers Dr. Ballardini, Dr. Ravali Gourishetti, and Dr. David Gueorguiev, as well as by Ph.D. students Behnam Khojasteh, Farimah Fazlollahi, and Nataliya Rokhmanova. Several of these WIP papers had co-authors from the HI Department who joined in on the poster presentations.

Nataliya’s WIP paper leveraged one of the research collaborations possible at MPI-IS by working with the Robotics ZWE, specifically Robert Faulkner, Julian Martus, and Dr. Jonathan Fiene, to help her build a usable prototype device for gait retraining with haptic feedback. When asked about the WIP format, Nataliya said, “I found that the Work-In-Progress format was a valuable way to get input from other researchers on the early stages of a project before you commit to your experimental methodology. The conversations I had at my poster were useful in making sure my research would address the most pressing questions in our field.”

A Highlight of Haptics: Demos

Since its start in 2005, the World Haptics Conference has featured hands-on demonstrations from researchers from all over the world innovating and expanding the diversity of touch-based technical systems. In-person attendance is particularly important for a haptics conference, where demos given by sponsors, workshop presenters, and researchers provide an extensive learning experience for attendees. Ph.D. student Natalia Sanchez studies wearable haptics and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Natalia praised her experience at WHC’23, saying, “It was great. My favorite part was the demos which allowed us to experience what haptic research feels like.”

The Haptic Intelligence team displayed three demos of their current research at the conference. Unfortunately, we were not able to transport a construction crane to Delft. Instead, Ph.D. student Yijie Gong brought a toy model to display how haptic feedback can improve telerobotic construction, complementing the oral presentation she gave for the technical paper she presented on the first day of the conference. Dr. Ravali Gourishetti and Autumn Hughes’s hand-held demo let conference attendees understand the benefits that haptic feedback of tool vibrations might have for people learning manual tasks such as haircutting or woodcarving. This is not the first time Ravali has shown a demo at a haptics conference; this year with Autumn was different, as both Ravali and Autumn recall, “During our hands-on demonstration, people were enthusiastic and provided valuable suggestions for future directions. Our demo attracted attendees from a wide range of research interests. We found it beneficial to have two setups available; this allowed multiple people to experience the demo simultaneously, enhancing engagement.” The HI Department’s third demo of a new motor for haptic feedback was presented by Dr. Javot and Dr. Ballardini.

Dr. Jeremy Brown wins World Haptics Early Career Award

Dr. Jeremy Brown, a previous postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Kuchenbecker and now Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, received the prestigious Technical Committee on Haptics (TCH) Early Career Award. Dr. Brown presented his journey through life and academics, including the mentors along the way that helped forge the HAMR lab at Johns Hopkins; it all started with watching his father, a woodworker, use his hands and his hammer to craft. A step along that journey was working with Dr. Kuchenbecker at the University of Pennsylvania on haptic feedback for surgical robotics, a large project still underway in HI.

The awards for best reviewer and best associate editor were presented by Dr. Kuchenbecker and her fellow Associate Editor-in-Chief, Professor Karon MacLean from the University of British Columbia in Canada. Excitingly, HI postdoc alumnus Dr. Gunhyuk Park received one of the two prizes for best reviewer. Additionally, awards were given for best work-in-progress poster, hands-on demonstration, ToH short paper, student presentation, and technical paper, all highly competitive with several rounds of judging in the paper submission and live presentation stage.

HI Alumni and the Future Investigators of Haptics

Many alumni were part of the event, including Dr. Ad Spiers (Imperial College London), Dr. Hojin Lee (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, South Korea), Dr. Hasti Seifi (Arizona State University), Dr. Yasemin Vardar (TU Delft), Dr. Gökhan Serhat (KU Leuven), and many more described throughout. Lab alumni Dr. Jeremy Brown and Dr. Claudio Pacchierotti helped host a lunch during the conference for young investigators, which was attended by HI research scientist Dr. David Gueorguiev, postdoctoral researchers Dr. Andrew Schulz and Dr. Giulia Ballardini, and alumna Dr. Cara Nunez, an incoming faculty member at Cornell University in the United States. This group discussed what early career life is like worldwide for researchers in haptics and beyond, including new and exciting challenges, collaborations, and opportunities. Dr. Giulia Ballardini recalled, “Attending the Early-Stage Investigator Lunch was an inspiring experience. It provided a remarkable opportunity to connect with other researchers and foster community and collaboration.”

The haptics community is relatively small, with around 500 total participants in attendance at WHC, but the community is in large part a family. Dr. Bernard Javot, Senior Research Engineer in HI, has attended this conference many times and notes that “the haptics community is a small family; everyone knows everyone and welcomes new people with open arms.”

Science + Socials = New Collaborations and Friends

Several times throughout the week, there were formal and informal socials where scientists could sit down and catch up outside of the conference center. The week began with a social at the TU Delft botanical garden, De Hortus Botanicus, and ended with a beautiful social outside at a local gathering spot, Lijm and Cultuur.

After the conference, all HI alumni and members, new and former, were invited to gather for a dinner organized by Dr. Kuchenbecker and Dr. Gökhan Serhat, Assistant Professor at KU Leuven, for a night of storytelling and memories. During an introduction round, attendees gathered around the tables and shared when and how they met Dr. Kuchenbecker, including several who joined her lab as undergraduates looking for a scientific home. One of the newest members of HI, master's student Arekh Tiwari, recaps the overall experience of the conference well. “As a first-time attendee, the conference showed me how people from different universities all over the world have unique approaches to innovation in haptics. It was inspiring to see their work, and it sparked new ideas for my project.”

Thanks to the organizers for hosting such an excellent conference for the MPI-IS Haptic Intelligence Department and alumni.

Text written by Andrew K. Schulz and Haliza Mat Husin. Photos taken by Bernard Javot, Rachael L’Orsa, Ifat Gertler, and Lijuan Wang. Text edited by Nataliya Rokhmanova and Katherine J. Kuchenbecker.