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Director Katherine J. Kuchenbecker and sixteen other members of the MPI-IS Haptic Intelligence (HI) Department presented seven of their current research projects at the 2022 EuroHaptics conference, which was held on-site and in-person from May 22 to 25, 2022, in Hamburg, Germany. EuroHaptics is a major international conference on haptics and touch-enabled computer applications and is the primary European meeting for researchers in this field. Together, the HI team presented two workshop talks, one workshop poster, two oral session talks, and three hands-on demonstrations, winning one award. Two HI members also chaired sessions of the conference.
Due to COVID-19 regulations, many recent conferences were held only virtually, including the IEEE Haptics Symposium 2022, a sister conference of EuroHaptics. Luckily, with an improved situation and relaxed rules in Hamburg, the organizers of EuroHaptics 2022 opted for holding a live event.
This in-person conference attracted researchers from around the world, resulting in more than 200 participants. The HI Department was perhaps the most strongly represented group, with sixteen in-person attendees. Despite relaxed COVID regulations, all attendees were encouraged to take the following measures: testing before leaving for the conference, masking indoors, and testing frequently during and after the conference period. The majority of the talks, posters, and demos were held live, together with three nights of social events. “After being away from social activities for about two years, attending various social activities with many haptics researchers was amazing,” said Dr. Gökhan Serhat, a Research Scientist in HI.
The conference witnessed the reunion of past and current members of Dr. Kuchenbecker’s lab. Many alumni were involved in organizing the conference and are leading the European haptics community. Dr. Claudio Pacchierotti, who is running the EuroHaptics Best Ph.D. Thesis Prize this year as secretary of the EuroHaptics Society, was a visiting Ph.D. student with Dr. Kuchenbecker at Penn. Several former postdocs from the HI Department also filled important leadership roles, including Dr. Hasti Seifi, the co-program chair of this conference. Dr. Yasemin Vardar is a core part of the organizing team for the 2023 IEEE World Haptics Conference to be held in Delft. Dr. David Gueorguiev co-organized the biggest workshop at the conference. Dr. Gunhyuk Park also attended the conference with eight of his students from GIST in South Korea. “Seeing so many alumni from my lab involved in the leadership of the conference and the European haptics community made me very proud,” said Dr. Kuchenbecker.
EuroHaptics 2022 featured long presentation times for hands-on demonstrations and in-person poster presentations. Such an arrangement granted the attendees detailed and realistic experiences and allowed them to better interact with the presenters. This format is much welcomed by the attendees. “I am happy that the organizers allocated four hours to demos, posters, and exhibits on all three of the main days of the conference,” remarked Dr. Kuchenbecker. “That allowed for plenty of time for interaction with other people, testing many demos, and talking to many poster presenters and companies.” With a high volume of conference attendees and great eagerness to experience demos, long queues were formed in front of some popular demos. “I appreciated that there were many demos, although some of them were difficult to try due to huge crowds,” commented Dr. Serhat.
In addition to the interesting demonstrations from the academic community, industrial developers and researchers also enlightened the conference audience with their demos. “Industrial companies did well and showed good demos, like the magneto-rheologic knob. It was also a nice touch with the artistic installation in the middle,” commented Dr. Javot.
Aside from the interactive demo sessions, the workshops of the conference also allowed attendees with similar research interests to learn about cutting-edge research. “I attended the skin mechanics workshop, and it was really helpful for me to learn up-to-date research by seminal researchers in the field,” said Saekwang Nam.
The MPI-IS Haptic Intelligence Department made a significant impact on the conference. Members of the group presented two workshop talks, one workshop poster, two paper presentations, and three hands-on demonstrations over the four days of the conference. There were lively discussions and interactions with several people during the presentations. “I explained how my team’s apparatus is different from the other research teams’ apparatuses, even though most of the researchers used similar measuring principles,” said Saekwang.
The three hands-on demonstrations particularly attracted the attention of many attendees. “I found presenting a hands-on demonstration a very interesting and helpful experience. People could physically try, touch and experience the demo to feel and understand the reasons behind your research,” said doctoral student Farimah Fazlollahi. “I would say that running the demo at EuroHaptics was a very exciting experience. It was a wonderful experience because I learned a lot about how users want to interact with the robot,” said former doctoral student Dr. Alexis E. Block. “HuggieBot has given the joy of experiencing robotic hugs to more than 130 people, with more than 200 hugs over the three days of our demo,” said Dr. Kuchenbecker.
The conference offered a guided city tour where participants had the opportunity to experience the city’s highlights from open-top double-decker buses. The conference dinner was offered in the harbor of Hamburg on a museum ship, Cap San Diego, with a perfect view of all the tourist hotspots. “Cap San Diego is a crazy place to have dinner,” commented Dr. Javot. On the last day of the conference, several members of the HI department gathered to have dinner at an Italian restaurant.
In addition to several presentations, the HI team was strongly involved in the leadership roles of the conference. Dr. Hasti Seifi was the co-program chair of this conference. Dr. David Gueorguiev co-organized the workshop on “Skin mechanics and its role in manipulation and perception” at the conference. Dr. Yasemin Vardar and Dr. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker chaired the paper sessions on “Tactile Perception” and “Haptic Guidance” on the second and third days, respectively.
As one of the best moments, Alexis E. Block, Hasti Seifi, Sammy Christen, Bernard Javot, and Katherine J. Kuchenbecker were awarded the EuroHaptics 2022 Best Demo Award for their hands-on demonstrations on “HuggieBot: a human-sized haptic interface.” Furthermore, David Gueorguiev and his co-authors won the best industrial award for their paper titled “Acoustic metamaterials for broadband localised haptics.” Congratulations to all of the prize winners!