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EECS Meets NU Faculty: Ed Colgate, MechE4:00 p.m.
October 28, 2009
Ford ITW Auditorium
J. Edward Colgate, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, McCormick
"Surface Haptics: Virtual Touch on Physical Surfaces" | Abstract:
Our world is increasingly populated with touch screen interfaces. These interfaces outperform traditional discrete controls (buttons, switches and knobs) in many ways. Yet, as discrete controls have disappeared, so have the tactile affordances that they once provided. As anyone who has attempted to type on an iPhone keyboard can attest, it is considerably more challenging than typing on a conventional keyboard, even a small one. For those who have motor or vision deficits, the lack of tactile feedback is even more problematic.
In this talk, I will give a brief overview of haptics – the perceptual system associated with touch and manipulation – and I will review some of the work that our group has done at Northwestern in the development of programmable haptic interfaces. I will focus especially on the problem of bringing programmable haptics to surfaces such as touch screens and touch pads. Our approach to this problem is based on high-bandwidth control of the frictional forces existing between a fingertip and the surface that it is touching. I will discuss the underlying physics that makes it possible to control friction forces, developments to date, and plans for future research. And, as is essential for any talk on haptics, I will have lots of hands-on demos.
Bio:
Ed Colgate’s principal research interest is human-robot interaction. He has worked extensively in the areas of haptic interface and teleoperation, and he, along with Michael Peshkin, is the inventor of a class of collaborative robots known as “cobots.” He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics. In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Colgate is a founder of two companies, Stanley Cobotics and of Kinea Design. He is currently the co-Director (with Don Norman) of the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. In this capacity, he directs the Master of Science in Engineering Design and Innovation, which combines graduate-level engineering courses with a broad exposure to human-centered design. |
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