Hiroyuki Shinoda, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Topic: Contactless tactile stimulation and his group's latest developments
Title: Midair haptics and Its Future
Abstract: What if sense of touch is transmitted in the air? Midair haptics based on non-contact tactile simulation has a great potential to renew user interfaces and VR, and broaden the use of human haptic sense. Radiation pressure of converged ultrasound can stimulate any part of human body in a noncontact manner, and the spatial and temporal profile of pressure on a skin is freely designed. Integrating such midair haptic feedback with aerial images realizes a practical and efficient 3D user interfaces, where users can transmit their intention as if they are operating real buttons. It enables enjoyable interaction with 3D virtual objects, and can also support 3D object design where the virtual 3D object is manipulated by bare fingers. In addition, haptic interaction through a wide area of skin enriches communication with stronger emotional effects, and sometimes can guide a human action providing a pleasant feeling. In this talk, I will summarize the present of midair haptics and discuss the future of the technology and application.
Biography: Hiroyuki Shinoda is a professor in Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, the University of Tokyo. He received the Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1995 and he started his laboratory in 1995 at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. In his innovative research projects on haptic sensors and displays, ultrasound devices, and surface networking, his group developed the world first noncontact ultrasound tactile display to create tactile sensation on bare skins in midair.
Eckehard Steinbach, TUM, Germany
Topic: Tele-haptics and the Tactile Internet
Title: Surface material retrieval and display
Abstract: This talk addresses tool-mediated object surface interaction setups which capture the information that is relevant for the classification of surface materials and which can be used to display their look and feel.
More specifically, we present a content-based surface material retrieval (CBSMR) system for tool-mediated freehand surface exploration that relies on features motivated by the main psychophysical dimensions of tactile surface texture perception.
The perceptual features used in our CBSMR engine cover the tactile dimensions of friction, hardness, macroscopic roughness, microscopic roughness and warmth. The proposed approach does not require explicit scan force and scan velocity measurements. Additionally we present a novel input/output device which is able to display the tactile properties of surface materials. Our Tactile Computer Mouse (TCM) is equipped with a series of actuators to display perceptually relevant tactile cues to a user. At the same time, the TCM preserves the interaction capabilities of a common computer mouse.
Biography: Eckehard Steinbach is a Professor for Media Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). His research interests are in the area of visual-haptic information processing and communication, telepresence and teleoperation, 3D image analysis and synthesis, as well as networked and interactive multimedia systems.
He studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany), the University of Essex (Great-Britain), and ESIEE in Paris. From 1994 - 2000 he was a member of the research staff of the Image Communication Group at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), where he received the Engineering Doctorate in 1999. From February 2000 to December 2001 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Information Systems Laboratory of Stanford University. In February 2002 he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of TUM.
From 2005-2015 Dr. Steinbach served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (CSVT). From 2011-2015 he also served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Trans. on Multimedia. Since 2017, he serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Haptics. From 2008 - 2011 Dr. Steinbach served as a member of the IEEE Multimedia and Signal Processing (MMSP) Technical Committee. Until the end of 2010 he has served as a member of the ICME Steering Committee. In March 2005 Dr. Steinbach has been appointed as a guest professor at the Sino-German School for Postgraduate Studies (CDHK) at Tongji University in Shanghai.
Dr. Steinbach and his team have received several best paper, best student paper or best poster awards for their work. Dr. Steinbach is the recipient of the 2011 “Research Award” of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation. He was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 2015 for his contributions to visual and haptic communications.