Northwestern Haptics Lab

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Robot dexterity

Touch the world

Shape-Based Remote Manipulation

Overcoming the communication delays

Electroadhesive rings

Feel the force at your finger tips

PixeLite

A wearable haptic array

Our Vision

Our goal is to blend three research fields to create ultimate haptics experience. We focus our research on haptic interfaces, dexterous manipulation, and complementary high-speed actuators. This integration will make any virtual environment feel real.

Surface haptics is the creation of programmable haptic effects on physical surfaces such as touch screens. Our lab has pioneered an approach to surface haptics based on controlling the shear forces at each fingertip through modulating the friction of a surface. This enables fingertips to interact with physics-based virtual environments such as shapes and textures

Robot dexterity is the ability robots to interact and manipulate a variety of objects through a set of actions.

Actuators are the main building blocks of any robotics systems and provide the motion needed. They, however, offer a trade-off between displacement and force. Our goal is to overcome this and provide mm-scale actuators that can simultaneously large force and displacements.

Our lab is part of the Center for Robotics and Biosystems at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University.

Our Research Interests

Haptic Interface

Wearable haptic array, Touchbot, and surface haptics

Robot Dexterity

Shape-Based Remote Manipulation (SBRM) to overcome communication delays

High-Speed Electroadhesive Devices

Understanding the mechanics of the electroadhesion and developing high-performance electroadhesive actuators

Faculty

J. Edward Colgate

Breed Senior Professor of Design
Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Research interests: physical human-robot interaction, including haptic display, teleoperation, and human-assist devices

Michael A. Peshkin

Breed Senior Professor of Design
Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Research interests: robotics, cobots, surface haptics, human-machine interface, bioinspired electrosense, sensors and actuators

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Haptic Interface

High-speed EA Devices

Robot Dexterity

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