World Haptics Workshop
Telepresence and the essential role of haptics
Telepresence refers to the feeling of truly being at a remote location. Telepresence systems can create that feeling through advanced, multisensory, bidirectional interfaces that allow you to sense, communicate, and act in a remote environment. As concluded after a recently completed XPRIZE competition on Avatar Robotics (Avatar XPRIZE), more complex tasks will demand high-fidelity haptics for fine manipulation and full body haptics (Analysis Avatar XPRIZE). This underlines that telepresence systems cannot rely on vision and audition only: haptics is of crucial importance for successful telepresence systems.
This panel workshop has invited talks and a round table discussion and attendees will learn about the state-of-the-art in telepresence haptics from XPRIZE finalists and about the big challenges as described in the IEEE Telepresence Roadmap. Attendees can actively contribute to the roadmap and learn more about the activities of the IEEE Telepresence initiative, sponsor of this workshop, IEEE Telepresence. More info: Events.
This panel workshop has talks and a round table discussion. Attendees will learn about the state-of-the-art in telepresence haptics from XPRIZE finalists and contribute to roadmaps.
For more information, visit IEEE World Haptics Conference 2025 Workshop/Tutorials.
Workshop Highlights
| Time | Speaker | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 | Opening, welcome, icebreaker | |
| 9:10 | Jan van Erp | Introduction to telepresence and the importance of haptics |
| 9:20 | Tiago Falk | User experience and human influential factors in multisensory experiences |
| 9:40 | Robin Lieftink | Haptic feedback in avatar robotics. Lessons learned from the ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition. |
| 10:00 | 30-minute break | |
| 10:30 | TBD | |
| 10:15 | Jan van Erp | Avatar mediated social touch |
| 11:10 | Claudio Pacchierotti | Cutaneous haptic feedback for human-centered robotics and immersive interactions. |
| 11:30 | Tiago Falk & Jan van Erp | Introduction to the IEEE Future Directions Telepresence initiative and the IEEE Telepresence Roadmap Activities |
| 11:45 | All | Round table discussion on haptics in telepresence (roadmap) |
| 12:00 | Closure |
Presentation Topics and Speakers:
Prof. Dr. Jan B.F. van Erp, University of Twente, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (Enschede, The Netherlands)
Jan van Erp is principal scientist with The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and full professor of tangible user interaction with the University of Twente. Jan obtained a master’s degree in Experimental Psychology from Leiden University and a PhD in Computer Science from Utrecht University, both in The Netherlands. His research focusses on multisensory perception and cognition, applied neuroscience, robotics, and human-machine collaboration in complex environments. Jan is also an IPMA C certified project manager and acted as program director for many (international) R&D programs, including a 24M€ program on Brain Computer Interfaces. Jan published more than a hundred peer reviewed papers (h-index 45), held several auxiliary board and advisory functions (a.o. for ETSI, ISO, NATO and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences) and serves on the editorial board of five scientific journals. Jan is the current (vice-)president of the Eurohaptics Society, general chair of Eurohaptics 2020, chair of the TNO Institutional Review Board for human subjects experiments, chair of the NATO Research Group Cognitive Neuro-enhancement, and team lead of team i-Botics (finalist in the ANA Avatar xprize competition). Public profiles: nl.linkedin.com/in/janvanerp; scholar.google.com/citations?user=3W1xn9EAAAAJ; orcid.org/0000-0002-6511-2850.
Prof. Dr. Tiago H. Falk, INRS-EMT, INRS-UQO, MuSAE Lab (Montréal/Gatineau, Canada)
Tiago H. Falk is a Full Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre on Energy, Materials, and Telecommunications (INRS-EMT), University of Quebec, where he directs the Multisensory Signal Analysis and Enhancement (MuSAE) Lab focused on building next-generation human-machine interfaces in both real and virtual settings. He is also Co-director of the INRS-UQO Mixed Research Unit on Cybersecurity, where research is being conducted to make human-machine interfaces secure and reliable by tackling emerging vulnerabilities to artificial intelligence algorithms. He is Co-chair of the Technical Committee (TC) on Brain-Machine Interface Systems of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (SMCS), Co-chair of the IEEE Telepresence Initiative, and Steering Committee member of the IEEE BRAIN Technical Community 2.0, the IEEE SPS Autonomous Systems Initiative, and the IEEE SPS Data Science Initiative. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE SMCS eNewsletter, and member-at-large of the IEEE SMCS Board of Governors.
Robin Lieftink, MSc, TNO Defense, Safety & Security, Department Human Machine Teaming (Soesterberg, The Netherlands)
Claudio Pacchierotti, PhD, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Rainbow Team (CNRS, Univ Rennes, Inria, IRISA) – Rennes, France
Prof. Dr. Antonio Frisoli, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Institute of Mechanical Intelligence, Ghezzano (Pisa), Italy