Akihiro Sato's Haptics research

Aki Sato's Haptics research page

This page describes my Haptics work done so far as a research engineer for Prof. Vincent Hayward at McGill University. Haptics is a relatively new field, so if you don't know much about it, here is an introduction at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic. I am still working on some projects, so hopefully I can revise this page with interesting news later.

Table of Contents:

My Interests in Haptics

Publications in Haptics

My Interests in Haptics

When I conduct research in Haptics, I do it for understanding anatomical and nervous mechanisms of sensing and motor control. For instance, the generally accepted structure of the sensing model would be the series of neural mechanisms: mechanoreceptor response, signal transmission, and cortex computation. I mostly agree with the structure, and in fact, we have one exciting result [1] on the mechanoreceptor response in this context. (In order not to mislead you, I note that the understanding itself is not my final goal, but it will lead my lifelong research to higher stages on quite a few aspects.)

I like learning not only knowledge in Haptics but also technical stuff for Haptics. My technical skills are becoming more versatile due to the nature of the field. Our scientific and engineering approaches to achieving academic contributions are no exception to the tradition: We always face with development of effectively innovative experimental apparatus. That is obviously demanding but fruitful. We explore unknown part of human mechanisms, and a new device is constructed in house specifically for each project in many cases. As a result, I have been involved in mechanical, electrical, and programming development. I also started slightly exposing myself to experimental procedures and analyses in Psychophysics in 2007. I am a real beginner in the new field, comparing to my more-than-a-decade career in Engineering.

To describe my actual work and interests, the following topics would be appropriate keywords to start with:

Some branches of Haptics:

- Kinesthesia, Proprioception, Motor control

- Haptic and tactile sensory mechanics and shape perception

- Artificial perception, Virtual Reality (VR)

- Haptic and tactile interfaces.

To be more precise, the devices I am working on present geometric shapes that can be felt using the index finger. The key factor is that these devices do not have the shapes of the objects you imagine when you touch them. One example from [1] is that, when the apparatus you touch moves horizontally along your fingerpad surface, you actually receive a sensation of vertical motion pushing against the fingerpad. Another example can be raised using a haptic interface from [2, 3]. The interface is mounted with a movable flat plate, and when you touch the plate, the motion of the plate is controlled such that you feel as if you are touching a curved object. The shape you feel can be programmed as the cylindrical part of a mug cup, for instance, which is not flat. You could call this sensation an illusion or artificial perception since the mug you imagine in the head does not exist in front of you. Such perception of a mug can possibly be used in Virtual Reality environments. VR machines are a useful form of Haptics applications, but they are not my theme of research. What we currently study is more like basic research. The occurrence of such a sensation is brought back to the issue on the human tactile system as some source of understanding, and we make contributions to eventually discovering how it happens exactly.

We would be delighted to invent practical assistive applications, and I personally feel that any finding of the human mechanisms would be an even better joy. I further desire to apply knowledge and findings obtained from Haptics to theoretical problems in machine design and control in the long run.

Publications in Haptics

[1] M. Nakatani, A. Sato, S. Tachi, and V. Hayward, "Tactile Illusion Caused by Tangential Skin Strain and Analysis in Terms of Skin Deformation", M. Ferre (Ed.), Haptics: Perception, Devices and Scenarios (Proc. Eurohaptics 2008), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 5024, pp. 229-237, Springer-Verlag, 2008.

[ Preprint ], [ LNCS Printed version ] , [ LNCS 5024 home ]

[2] M. W. A. Wijntjes, A. Sato, A. M. L. Kappers, and V. Hayward, "Haptic Perception of Real and Virtual Curvature", M. Ferre (Ed.), Haptics: Perception, Devices and Scenarios (Proc. Eurohaptics 2008), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 5024, pp. 361-366, Springer-Verlag, 2008.

[ Preprint ], [ LNCS Printed version ], [ LNCS 5024 home ]

[3] M. W. A. Wijntjes, A. Sato, A. M. L. Kappers, and V. Hayward, "Local Surface Orientation Dominates Haptic Curvature Discrimination", IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 2009. In press. (Published online)

[ Preprint ], [ IEEE Xplore ], [ IEEE CS DL ]