Haptics. What is out there?
The broad overview of the field of haptics. What does it comprise of, what questions does it try to answer, how does it help humanity? In stories and pictures. Again inspired by World Haptics 2017.
Starting with infographics (you can expand it and zoom in on images):

As I’ve mentioned before, haptics encompasses a range of disciplines: from philosophy to material science. To the left of the centre, there are fields that study the body, to the right — technology and devices.
1. Body

Far left, we talk about the most speculative and meaning-of-life stuff (philosophy), raising such questions as “what is reality?”, “who are we?” and “what is consciousness?”. One of the biggest researchers in this field, Olaf Blanke, who works at EPFL (Blanke lab) on brain mechanisms of body perception, body awareness and self-consiousness, gave a key-note session at World Haptics which turned the world on its head for me. How can we create an out-of-body experiences with VR and haptics and how can we use it? A Rubber hand illusion is an example of perception shift from a part of your body to some external object. (I think he is friends with Mel Slater a father of perception and empathy studies using VR.)
Moving right (psychology), we talk about how our perception is created and what affects it. What are the tactile illusions and how are they created (cutaneous rabbit, black body seems heavier than a white)? How different perception modalities affect the others, how can we substitute one with another?
When neurophysiology mixes with psychology, it begins answering questions: how stroking evokes pleasant sensations? Which nerve endings are responsible for itching and is the itching just a low-level pain? (Maybe) Which body parts are represented by which tactile-sensing cells in somatosensory cortex (somatosensory homunculus for your attention: lips and fingers are the most sensitive)
Biochemistry: in order for neurons to start transmitting signals, they need to be activated. Which proteins in the cell-membrane are responsible for the temperature sensing? Why is pepper hot and mint cold? (Because they affect the temperature threshold of our temperature-sensing cells)*
2. Contact
Biophysics & contact physics: the tactile sensations from the lateral skin displacement will make you feel the weight of the object. The slips of the object along the skin will give you some extra information. How do these slips occur? How does the vibration spread along the skin surface (and how does it affect our perception, because it does)? Which direction is force applied to our fingers when we hold a pen? a ball? a key? a kitten? Study of haptic rendering is bunch of complex computational problems, trying to understand how to make a 3D-object rigid and how and when to apply which forces.
3. Devices
First we are building a contact point. Make it vibrate or exert force. I put here Material Science, which can also include creating materials and methods for soft-robotics (another amazing plenary talk at World Haptics by Alison Okamura: the spooky robots that grow like a vine).

Moving further to the right, here’s Engineering. Although the technologies of touch were discussed before, here the focus is on haptic devices. They can be divided into 1. kinaesthetic, or force-feedback action devices (usually directly acting upon arms, hands or fingers); 2. surface roughness modulation devices (flat surface); and 3. guiding haptics, usually vibrations/rumbling that deliver some information (with suitable approach, these sensations can become very sophisticated).
Here, I will mention the applications of these technologies.
- Training for all, cheaply:
Example No.1. Seven students suddenly want to practice palpating the anus. But they cannot find volunteers. We have a solution: robotic simulator for anal sphincter!
Example No.2. 10 nuclear power plant workers need to learn how to act in the event of an accident (Praimfaia). But they do not have access to Chernobyl/Fukushima (and it’s a good thing they don’t). Virtual simulations with haptic feedback will solve their problem!
- Haptics for 3D modelling & engineering. It is still not clear if it’s useful (Haption have their devices in the large engineering firms, but apparently don’t use them that often) Success of haptics in this field will depend largely on the device form-factor and UX.
- Entertainment.**
- Teleoperation. Controlling robots in the operation room, adding a haptic feedback to distinguish tissues and bones.
- Rehabilitation. Very often people after experiencing stroke or a spime injury, need to regain control over their limbs. Helping them do that by applying force in a controlled but playful manner is super important (see Immersive Rehab)
- Prosthetics. People want to feel what they touch! Always. It is such a loss when people have a plastic/robotic hand but cannot feel the world! There has been some effort of doing surgical targeted sensory reinnervation to send signal from the sensors on the prosthetics directly into the nerve. But is there a way of doing it without surgery?
- Computer-human interaction. We have been experiencing haptics in this field for quite a while — vibromotors in your phone (press the home button on your iPhone 7). How can we explore it / improve it / expand to different devices… Tactile feedback can be another modality to transfer lots of information parallel to vision and hearing. I would love to walk the streets, looking around, listening to the elephants honking while reading a news feed or a text message using my skin.
Haptics is cool, complex, broad, exciting and tangible. Peace!
*random fact No.1. Birds don’t feel hot while eating pepper seeds! Because they don’t digest it, and when they poo(pee?), they actually spread the seeds away from the origin. Mammals, on the other hand, digest pepper. Therefore feeling of hot chilli — is a protection mechanism developed by Pepper against Us!
**Random idea No.1. Recently we came up with a completely new area: Military Porn: not as two separate entities, but as a cross-polinating collaborative murderous bacchanalia with the goal to overthrow a dictator
