Workshops

Workshops will be held on Monday, July 4, 2016 before the Eurohaptics 2016 conference.

List of accepted workshops/tutorials:

Directions: how to get to South Kensington and to workshops (RSM – Royal School of Mines).
Detailed information about the workshops is available below.
Pre-workshop registration desk will open at 8:30 for badges collection in RSM 3rd floor.
Registration is required for participating at the workshops.

Morning 9:15:00-13:15

Musical haptics: use and relevance of haptic feedback in musical practice (9:15-13:15)

  • Organisers: Stefano Papetti (Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland) and Ercan Altinsoy (Dresden University of Technology, Germany)
  • Abstract. Together with audition, the sense of touch is key when playing traditional musical instruments, supporting performance control (e.g., timing, intonation) and expressivity. Conversely, while current digital musical interfaces usually offer touch-mediated interaction, they currently do not provide a natural physical experience to the performer. We argue that future digital musical instruments (DMIs) providing advanced haptic feedback may offer enhanced user experience and performance. Also, haptic feedback would facilitate the access to DMIs for persons with somatosensory loss, the visually and even the hearing impaired, and it may provide an effective means for musical tuition and guidance. However, the details of how the auditory and haptic modalities are actually exploited in instrumental performance are still largely unknown, and require further research. For this reason, and due to still unanswered technological requirements, the design of haptic DMIs is not yet established. To investigate such issues, a strongly interdisciplinary scientific approach is required, bringing together fields such as haptic technology, psychophysics of audition and touch, physics of musical instruments, applied psychology and human-computer interaction. The workshop will present the latest researches (and related open issues) on the role of the haptic modality in the musician-instrument interplay, and on the implementation of haptic feedback in digital musical instruments.
  • Link to the website

Thermal perception and thermal displays (9:15-13:15)

  • Organisers: Masashi Nakatani (Hokkaido University, Japan), Hsin­‐Ni Ho (NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Japan)
  • Abstract. The presentations in this workshop will span a range of research in temperature sensing from basic perceptual properties of human thermosensory system to engineering applications of thermal displays. We will invite two top haptic scientist in thermal sensation and four young faculties to provide latest outcome of psychological and engineering study of thermal sensation and displays. This workshop is partially supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Innovative “SHITSUKAN: brain representations of physical properties of objects” science and technology) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
  • Link to the website

Haptics for dental simulators: challenges and opportunities (9:15-13:15)

  • Organisers: Dangxiao Wang (Beihang University, China) and William Harwin (University of Reading, China)
  • Open workshop, contact organisers for participation.
  • Abstract. In the past twenty years, dental simulation and training has been an active application area for haptics technology. Several haptics-­‐enabled dental simulators have been developed and a few of them have been commercialized. Compared with the clinical requirements from dental schools, there still exist large improvement potential for current dental simulators, because the simulation of fine motor skill in dental operations propose big challenges for both haptic devices and haptic simulation software. In this workshop, we aim to provide a discussion forum for researchers and dentists to share their experiences and expectations for inventing useful dental simulators. Several key technical challenges will be discussed, including but not limiting to: design of the haptic device with high stiffness and low inertia, development of haptic rendering algorithms to simulate the diversified pathological changes, and subjective and objective evaluation procedure and standard of dental simulators etc.
  • Link to the website

Afternoon 14:00-18:00

Tutorial: Social touch in human-robot interaction (14:00-18:00)

  • Organisers: Merel Jung, Christian Willemse, Gijs Huisman and Jan van Erp (University of Twente, the Netherlands)
  • Abstract. The goal of the workshop is to spark interest in the topic of social touch, with a specific focus on social touch in human-robot interaction. The workshop will start with an introductory lecture,  given by the organizers, on the topic of social touch in interpersonal interaction. A vast proportion of this lecture will be about how findings from interpersonal touch can be extended to, and applied in human-robot interaction. Thereafter, participants will work together on designing an (informal) experiment in which a human subject interacts with a robot using touch. Small groups of participants will work on the design of different parts of the experiment (e.g., study protocol, evaluation methods, technical implementation and physical setup). The experiment will be run during the main conference, preferably during the demo sessions. An important requirement for the experiment therefore is that it should be fun/interesting to see for the conference audience (e.g. live display of results/ participants’ reactions). The organizers will provide the basic materials for the experiment such as laptops, robots and video cameras.
  • Link to the website

Advances in touch enabled robotics (14:00-18:00)

  • Organisers: Ravinder Dahiya (University of Glasgow, UK), Gordon Cheng (Technical University Munich, Germany) and Etienne Burdet (Imperial College London, UK)
  • Abstract. While robot manipulators traditionally relied on vision and some force sensing for control, recent years have seen a surge in new sensors to endow them with the sense of touch and related applications, as well as a deeper understanding of touch sensing in humans gained by experiments with advanced robotic devices. This workshop will present new tools (electronic skin, multisensory tiles etc.) available for equipping robots with the sense of touch, illustrates some of the behaviours these novel sensors enable to implement, and how this permits new ways for robots to interact with humans.
  • Link to the website

Haptic illusions: challenge, chance or nuisance for applications? (14:00-18:00)

  • Organiser: Astrid M.L. Kappers (Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands)
  • Open workshop, contact organisers for participation.
  • Abstract. Haptic perception is susceptible to illusions and is very often not veridical. In this workshop we will question whether and if so how this has or should have any consequences for the design of applications. If we think that it is important to correct for misperceptions (for example, because it makes interacting with applications less inuitive) this is a real challenge. On the other hand, if due to illusions or misperceptions, we convey exactly the perception that we want to convey (although very different from the real physical stimulation), it provides us with a big chance. But we might also see these misperceptions as just a nuisance: in general, humans have a very steep learning curve, so why bother if at first their perception seems to be at odds with what they are supposed to perceive? They will adjust quickly and that’s much easier than correcting.
  • This workshop will bring people with these different opinions together and the audience is invited to actively participate in the discussion. The workshop will ideally consist of a number of presentations from people working in different fields such as psychophysics or applications, followed by a general discussion. For the discussion we hope to find persons that are willing to defend a strong proposition about this workshop topic.
  • If you are willing to give a talk: Please submit a short abstract (max 1 page, by email) explaining what you would like to present during this workshop and how it would fit the goals of the workshops. E-mail: Astrid Kappers < A.M.L.Kappers@vu.nl >
  • If you are willing to defend a proposition: Please submit the proposition (email). Also provide some arguments pro and con this proposition, to show that it is indeed a debatable proposition. E-mail: Astrid Kappers < A.M.L.Kappers@vu.nl >
  • Link to the website