"Engineering Touch"

Abstract: I will describe recent work in my lab on haptics and soft electronics. Much of this work is been motivated by a longstanding goal of engineering research, which has been to realize technologies that can reflect the amazing perceptual and motor capabilities of biological systems for touch, including the human hand. This objective remains far from reality, due in part to our limited understanding of the mechanics underlying touch sensation, i.e. of what it is that the skin, our largest sensory organ, feels when we touch objects in the world. Some of the challenges involved can be traced to the complexity of mechanical interactions involved, the high dimensionality of these signals, the multiple length and time scales involved, which span several physically distinct regimes, and, not least, their sensitive dependence on the way we move and contact objects when we touch them. I will describe research that has aimed at quantifying, and overcoming, these challenges, and will explain how the results can inform the development of new technologies for wearable computing, virtual reality, and robotics.

Biosketch: Yon Visell is Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Media Arts and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the RE Touch Lab, part of the California Nanosystems Institute. His research focuses on haptic engineering, robotics, and the mechanics and neuroscience of touch, and is motivated by creative applications in haptic human-computer interaction, sensorimotor augmentation, and interaction in virtual reality. Assistant Professor (2013-2015) in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Drexel University. Post-Doctoral Fellow (2011-2012) at the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris 06. PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University’s Center for Intelligent Machines (2011). MA and BA degrees in Physics (Univ. Texas-Austin and Wesleyan Univ.). He spent more than 5 years in industrial R&D at high technology firms, including Ableton, where he contributed to music software that is now used by artists worldwide, from Pete Townshend to Vijay Iyer and Nine Inch Nails, served as research scientist (speech technology) at Vocal Point (now Nuance), and sonar researcher at ARL Austin. He undertook interactive art and design research at FoAM, Belgium, at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, and at Zero-Th, Croatia, an organization that he co-founded in 2005. Author of more than 60 peer reviewed articles, and editor of two books on interaction in virtual reality, including (with F. Steinicke, A. Lécuyer, and J. Campos) “Human Walking in Virtual Environments: Perception, Technology, and Applications”, Springer Verlag, Series in Engineering, 2013. His work has received several awards, including a Google Faculty Research Award, and Best Paper awards at the 2010 and 2016 IEEE Haptics Symposium. He has exhibited electronic music and artworks at international venues including SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies, Ircam/Centre Pompidou, Design Biennale St. Etienne, Ars Electronica, INC Miami, V2 Institute, FoAM Brussels, Phaeno Science Center, the city of Ivrea, Italy, the city of Kortrijk, Belgium, and elsewhere.