Smart Haptics is a technical conference focused on the commercialization of haptic technology. This year’s event will explore how haptic technologies are changing the ways in which we interpret and interact with our world – and each other.
Since 2017, Smart Haptics has provided this growing industry with a forum dedicated to exploring the future of haptic technology. This conference encourages important conversations about emerging applications, innovative ideas, and opportunities for collaboration across the supply chain. Presentations are designed to engage and inform the haptics industry through case studies and panel discussions that provide the opportunity for attendees to both experience and explore the latest technologies and emerging applications.
Learn More About This Industry-Leading Event
The 2023 program will be announced soon. The 2022 agenda included presentations from Microsoft, Google, Meta, Woven Planet, Grewus, Boréas Technologies, FundamentalVR, Sensoria Health, Ultraleap, Elitac Wearables, PSYONIC, InterDigital, and many more this past December, as they presented leading insights into the evolving haptics industry. View the Agenda >>>
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Humans have created many technologies to produce motion. Motors, gears, pistons, compressors - these inventions are remarkable achievements, yet they are all inferior to motion designs found in nature.
Rigid metal parts that pop, grind, or whine cause problems and tradeoffs that must be separately mitigated. These traditional technologies are expensive, inefficient, loud, heavy, and complex.
Instead of continuing down the path of slow and rigid metal-based technology, humans should leverage nature’s hard work and develop soft motion technologies more similar to natural muscles.
Robotics and automation technologies have demonstrated rapid advances in software, vision, and control, but the enabling hardware technology has not kept up. These advances have opened the door to virtual worlds, yet our methods of interacting with those virtual worlds are primitive.
HE FUTURE OF MOTION
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Bio Coming Soon
Nicholas Colonnese is a Research Science Director at Meta Reality Labs Research, working on novel interfaces for augmented and virtual reality. He leads a multidisciplinary haptic displays program, which includes researchers with expertise in materials, actuation, rendering algorithms, perception, interaction design, and haptic value evaluation. His mission is to bring the sense of touch to the metaverse. He is an active member of several academic and industrial communities, including Haptics Symposium, World Haptics, UIST, CHI, ISWC, SIGGRAPH, Smart Haptics, and others. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
My bio: Hong Z. Tan is an educator, scientist, technologist, and entrepreneur. She is best known for her research on haptics psychophysics, taking a perception-based approach to developing haptic interfaces. Throughout her academic career, Hong has kept a close tie with industry through her consulting activities, a four-year stint at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, and currently as a lead haptics scientist at Google. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for her contributions to wearable haptics.
Hong received her bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After two years as a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, she joined the faculty in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in 1998. She holds concurrent courtesy appointments in the School of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University.
Eric is a haptics enthusiast breaking the barriers for haptics to scale.
Eric designed the haptics architecture of Interhaptics, lead a team of engineers and marketing colleagues to the launch of the Haptics Composer: the first multiplatform Haptics Design tool on the market.
He co-founded Go Touch VR exploring skin indentation technologies for haptics applications in VR. Go Touch VR raised 2 m $ to create new technologies for XR.
Eric was the CTO of Hap2u in charge of the software team designing the rendering stack to drive surface haptics technologies at full capabilities. Hap2U raised 6 m $ from Daimler and it is going to revolution mobile haptics as we know it.
He published 20 + scientific papers on haptics and human-machine interactions and deposed 5 patents on haptics technologies and applications.
Since 2007, Stella has been working as a development engineer at BMW, with a focus on haptics and future interior concepts.
J. Edward Colgate received a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering in 1988 from M.I.T. He subsequently joined Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he is currently the Allen and Johnnie Breed University Design Professor and a member of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Colgate's principal research interests are haptic interfaces and human-robot interaction. He and collaborator Michael Peshkin are the inventors of a class of collaborative robots known as “cobots” and a suite of technologies for bringing programmable haptic feedback to touch screens. Dr. Colgate was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame. Dr. Colgate was one of the founding co-directors of the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University where he directed the Master of Science in Engineering Design and Innovation, which combines graduate-level engineering courses with a broad exposure to human-centered design. In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Colgate has founded three startup companies the most recent of which, Tanvas Inc., is commercializing innovative surface haptics technologies.
Simon Chaput is the founder and President of Boréas Technologies Inc., a company developing novel miniature low-power piezoelectric actuator drivers for the haptic market based on its proprietary CapDriveTM technology. CapDriveTM was invented by Mr. Chaput during his Ph.D. at Harvard University. Over the years, Boréas Technologies built an internal team of mechanical engineers to develop novel system integration solutions for piezo actuators. In 2019, Boréas Technologies introduced SmartClik, a buttonless concept phone. In 2021, Boréas released the Boréas Piezo Haptic Engine and NexusTouchTM. Mr. Chaput holds a B.Eng (2011) and an M.A.Sc. (2013) from Université de Sherbrooke.
Masatoshi Miyakawa is the business development director of Miraisens, Inc., which was founded in 2014, developed a 3DHaptics™ technology based on illusionary haptics, the world’s first haptic technology established on a neuroscientific basis by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Miraisens joined Murata Manufacturing in December 2019.
Masatoshi started his career as an audio engineer in the music and entertainment industry. Since joining Miraisens in 2018, he has enjoyed collaborating to create an immersive experience with game developers.
Jas Brooks (they/them) is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Chicago. Their research expands the computer interface to engage with the chemical interactions of our bodies and investigates what this paradigm enables. These chemical interfaces have given rise to new I/O methods (e.g., low-power thermal/tactile experiences and stereo-smell) and are uniquely situated to help with smell and taste disorders. Jas has published work at top Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) venues, including ACM CHI and UIST, of which 2 received Best Paper Awards. Their work has also been awarded an Honorable Mention in the Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards for Experimental Design and covered in media publications like WIRED, Fast Company, Digital Trends, and IEEE Spectrum. Jas is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and a UChicago Media Arts, Data, and Design Graduate Fellow.
During their free time, Jas documents the history of scent technologies and media. They are currently revisiting the story of Behind the Great Wall in AromaRama, conserving the last known Smell-O-Vision system and Scent of Mystery fragrance from 1960, and interviewing stakeholders from companies like DigiScents, Inc. Their curatorial work has been recognized internationally.
Danny Grant is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Innovobot Labs, an R&D and Innovation Design House that tackles pressing problems through the development and application of cutting-edge technologies. A haptics visionary and prolific inventor, Danny has a proven record of innovation and a passion for building a better future. He is named on more than 270 US patents and key inventions with high commercial value, including the haptic technology licensed by Sony and featured in the PlayStation®5 DualSense™ Controller. Danny is one of the foremost authorities on haptic technologies and their application with additional expertise in core technologies: mechatronics, robotics and control systems, across multiple industries (medical devices, automotive, mobile, gaming, VR and augmented reality...). He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from McGill University, where he is an adjunct Professor of Computer Science and is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
David Parisi (PhD, NYU) is Professor of Emerging Media at the College of Charleston. His research investigates the past, present, and future of touching with digital technologies. His book Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) explores the technological transformations of touch necessary for the invention of touch-based computer interfaces. Opening with an examination of touch’s role in apprehending the mysteries of eighteenth century electrical machines and closing with an analysis of new computing technologies that digitally synthesize haptic sensations, Archaeologies of Touch traces the development of a technoscientific haptics across four centuries. His work on digital touch has been featured in forums such as Real Life, Internet of the Senses, Flash Forward, All in the Mind, The Correspondent, Tech Crunch, The Believer, and Vice. He is an editor at ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories and co-edited the Haptic Media Studies issue of New Media & Society.
Prior to joining XPRIZE, Jacquelyn Morie spent 13 years as a Sr. Research Scientist at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), which she helped found. While there, she created novel VR telehealth and educational activities using her deep understanding of art, computer animation and human behavior to enhance engagement with these programs. As Founder and Chief Scientist of her company, All These Worlds, LLC, Morie continued this work for private and government clients, including NASA’s Behavioral Health & Performance Research group, for whom she developed the ANSIBLE Project, which studied how to mitigate psychological issues that might imperil future long duration space travelers. She served as a member of the DARPA Information, Science And Technology think tank from 2011 through 2015, and lectures extensively on how technology will affect our future selves and humanity. Dr. Morie is also an ACM Distinguished speaker, and holds masters’ degrees in both Fine Art and Computer Science. She also holds a doctorate in immersive technologies from the prestigious SmartLab Program through the University of East London.
