Chelsea Kertes – Conference Producer, Smithers

A major challenge in achieving premium haptics in consumer products is the lack of broadband actuators that can deliver vibrotactile stimuli that cover the entire frequency-amplitude range of human haptic perception. While having an actuator that can deliver perceivable accelerations below 100hz is a necessary condition for achieving rich haptic sensations, the actuator does not need to do so at all frequencies. Limited perceptual resolutions in space and time can be exploited to devise broadband vibrotactile displays using narrowband actuators. I will present psychophysical results that support this insight, and discuss its implications in achieving delightful and informative haptics in applications such as gaming and virtual reality
Hong Z. Tan | Lead Haptics Scientist at Google & Professor of Electrical and Computer Eng. Purdue University, Google

MPEG is completing (and it should probably be finalized by December) the first draft of its standard for the representation & coding of haptic data. This presentation gives an overview of this first release, including a description of the codec architecture, the supported formats, information on the performances and the current roadmap for future extensions.
Philippe Guillotel | Distinguished Scientist, InterDigital

Moderator: Peter Cooney, COO & Founder, SAR
 
Panelists:

• Robert Desautels, Chief Technology Officer, D-Box Technologies
• Simon Chaput, Founder & President, Boreas Technologies
• Elisa Santella, Managing Director, GREWUS

The haptics sector continues to develop and innovate so that it can exploit new opportunities in line with technological and societal changes. This panel will start with a short presentation covering the current landscape and opportunities within the haptics sector. Then, it will open to all panelists to have an expansive conversation to explore the views and thoughts for opportunities (and threats) for the industry.
Peter Cooney | COO, SAR Insight & Consulting

More details to come

The sense of touch is a critical element into an immersive user experience. Haptics is, essentially, the science of touch. According to IDTechEx, the haptics market will be worth nearly $5bn by 2025. How can an electronic device enhance the user experience through interacting with the sense of touch? Haptic technologies have been present in gaming and cell phone for a long time. More recent developments are enabling far more sophisticated user experiences. KEMET Electro-Mechanical Polymer-based actuators are thin, light, flexible, and provide a wide range of haptic feedback that are mild, pleasing and distinguishable from one another thereby providing a wide range of localized feedback.
Francois Jeanneau | Director Product Management, Yageo

Abstract to come
Eric Vezzoli | Associate Director, Haptics, Razer Inc.

Traditional automotive mid-air gesture interfaces have lacked the presence of tactile feedback which has led to an uncanny sense of agency – drivers often feel under-confident that their gestural action has resulted in the correct outcome. Mid-air haptic technology allows the driver to feel tangible sensations without contact with a surface, thereby providing haptic feedback to gesture controls. This means that gestures can now be designed to map onto a driver’s schema for interacting with more familiar physical controls making them more proprioceptive and less visually demanding. In this talk we will discuss the design research process that aligns to this framework and the results of a medium fidelity driving simulator validation study.
Brian Kappus | Distinguished Engineer, Ultraleap

Manuel's talk focuses on the benefits of classical mechanical control elements when used as automotive user interfaces. Examples of classical mechanical control elements include push buttons and rotatory knobs. One aspect of the talk will be the comparison of (a) energy (measured in Joule) and (b) force (measured in Newton) regarding un-intended operation by the human operator due to inertial forces that are typical for the automotive domain.
Dr. Manuel Kuehner | Haptics Engineer, Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota

The automotive market is undergoing a massive transformation from mechanical to digital Solid-State Interfaces (SSI) as electric vehicles become mainstream, whereby 2026, all mechanical interfaces will be gone from new vehicle platforms. The user experience for a touch user interface will be judged by not only a haptic feedback pattern but also when to trigger and how to trigger that pattern. The best haptic experience needs a combination of a world-class touch input sensing system to deliver the most realistic user experience. In this talk, Dr. Tang will explain that combining UltraSense’s multi-mode touch input sensor System-on-a-Chip (SoC) with a low latency haptic driver chip provides for a miniaturized single-chip solution to enable a turn-key solution for a Solid-State Interface for automotive.
Hao-Yen Tang | Co-founder and CTO, UltraSense Systems Inc.

Chelsea Kertes – Conference Producer, Smithers

Chelsea Kertes – Conference Producer, Smithers

Gait impairments and related falls are a significant contributor to healthcare burden. Gait assessments are a key indicator of risk of falls (ROF). Currently however, accurate gait monitoring is limited to clinical and lab environments. We propose a smart wearable haptic system to extend gait assessments and monitoring to Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients at home and in the community.
The new Sensoria smart sock implemented in partnership with Michael J. Fox Foundation, has the potential to both remotely monitor gait, and detect and potentially predict ROF events such as Freeze of Gait (FOG) as well as address specific fall risk factors (i.e. gait speed as previously noted) in Parkinson’s disease patients.  Each smart sock is equipped with three proprietary textile pressure sensors positioned at the plantar area of the foot (below the 1^st and 5^th metatarsal heads and under the calcaneus bone), 9-axis IMU (accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope) and Bluetooth inside the Sensoria Core microelectronics and two miniaturized, powerful haptic motors at the ankle bone level to intervene by sending rhythmic vibrations in real-time to the patient during a FOG event. 
Real patient testimony:  When comparing the first walk without haptic stimulation to the last walk with ankle stimulation, perceived quality of walking increased by from 20% to 70% and perceived mental effort decreased from 100% to 50%.
This is just one example of using haptic technology can dramatically impact healthcare outcomes for a variety of clinical scenarios.
Davide Vigano | Co-Founder and CEO, Sensoria Health Inc.

Additional Speakers: Vicky Smalley, CTO, FundamentalVR

Highly refined kinesthetic haptics are now being deployed at scale to improve the acquisition of surgical skills by FundamentalVR delivering the physical cues to build capability faster than traditional approaches. In this talk we will explore the use cases, technical challenges and application in a software first, hardware agnostic environment. 
Richard Vincent | CEO/Co-Founder, FundamentalVR

Haptic feedback technology is more than just ‘vibration motors’. And it has more potential than ‘just’ alarming systems. Haptic feedback can be unobtrusive, intuitive, highly accurate and suitable for everyday use. But it can even be remarkable: it is capable of replacing lost senses. In this presentation, haptic-feedback-wearable developer Guus de Hoog will give you an insight in what is called: Sensory Substitution.
Guus de Hoog | Creative Director, Elitac Wearables

Abstract to come
Nicholas Colonnese | Research Science Director, Facebook Reality Labs

The panel will talk about the metaverse – both from a haptics perspective but also beyond haptics. How will the metaverse change the industry and the world?  
 
Moderator: Nick Colonnese, Research Science Director, Meta Reality Labs
 
Panelists: Panelists to come!

• What is haptics feedback for video games and what are the different types of Haptics
• Difference between native haptics and Audio DSP generated Haptic feedback
• How does D-BOX Technologies create native Haptic feedback
• Using Haptic feedback to further immerse the gamer
• Some of our best practices using Haptic feedback

Robert Desautels | Chief Technology Officer, D-Box Technologies

Developing digital design ideas requires shared visualization of design concepts by both originators and users. However, for visually impaired (VI) designers, this requires coordinated support for VI senses of touch, proprioception, and sound. Unfortunately, most existing online environments make little or no such provision. The MAKEACTIVE studio augments virtual studio space via haptic feedback and has been designed to afford continuous multi-user tangible engagement with shared objects. This sensory-augmented studio addresses the needs of VI communities of practitioners and provides inclusive accessible support for digital creative arts, e-crafts, design, and engineering.
Dr. Lisa Bowers | Regional Academic, The Open University

Abstract to Come
Dr. Margot Racat Ph.D. | Professor of Marketing, IDRAC Business School

Commercially available bionic limbs have been far behind the state-of-the-art research that has been developed at academic institutions around the world. PSYONIC's Ability Hand was developed to take advances in soft robotics and sensorimotor prostheses and make them available and accessible to people with upper limb amputations in the US and abroad. The Ability Hand is a multiarticulated bionic hand that is the fastest on the market, robust to impacts, and gives users touch feedback. It is also covered by Medicare in the US. This talk will detail the development of the Ability Hand, its current capabilities, and further advancements in bionic limbs that will be coming in the near future.
Aadeel Akhtar | CEO, Founder, PSYONIC

Smell and temperature are critical components to our survival and day-to-day engagement. They are pleasure, flavor, and memory. They help us detect threats, whether perished foods, noxious air, or even health issues. As we expand our presence to extended reality (XR), researchers have experimented with these modalities using devices like thermoelectric materials. Unfortunately, these devices are power-hungry, making them incompatible with portable devices (e.g., XR headsets or smartphones). Researchers must redesign the actuators underlying smell and temperature interfaces to be simultaneously more power efficient and small. However, this is not an easy task. These actuators lose stimulation breadth and strength when shrunk, even failing to produce noticeable sensations. We urgently need new, creative solutions that circumvent these physical limitations.
In my research, I explore chemical interfaces that may provide such solutions. Chemical interfaces leverage the interaction between molecules and targeted receptors to produce interactive inputs and outputs, unlike traditional methods involving mechanical actuation. These interfaces open new doors for devices to integrate with and trick the body. Building off this paradigm, I have miniaturized temperature feedback by tricking the body into thinking a temperature change occurred via scents that trigger thermal receptors. Taking this a step further, a lab colleague and I developed a chemical device that could produce several distinct haptic sensations using a single actuator, for which typical interfaces need individual actuators for each feeling. This talk will explore these research projects and the overarching vision for chemical interfaces.
Jas Brooks | PhD Student, University of Chicago