Haptic Systems for Enhancing the Human Sense of Touch

Allison Okamura, Haptic Systems for Enhancing the Human Sense of Touch. Haptic (touch) feedback can play myriad roles in enhancing human performance and safety in skilled tasks. In teleoperated surgical robotics, force feedback improves the ability of a human operator to effectively manipulate and explore patient tissues that are remote in distance and scale. In virtual and augmented reality, wearable and touchable devices use combinations of kinesthetic (force) and cutaneous (tactile) feedback to make rich, immersive haptic feedback both more compelling and practical. In this talk, I will present a collection of novel haptic devices, control algorithms, and user performance studies that demonstrate a wide range of effective design approaches and promising real-world applications for haptic feedback.

Allison Okamura is a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in Computer Science. She was previously Professor and Vice Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on developing the principles and tools needed to realize advanced robotic and human-machine systems capable of haptic (touch) interaction, particularly for biomedical applications. Haptic systems are designed and studied using both analytical and experimental approaches.