Northwestern Haptics Lab
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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.
![SurfaceHaptics1](https://sites.northwestern.edu/hapticsgroup/files/2023/11/SurfaceHaptics1.jpg)
Our lab is part of the Center for Robotics and Biosystems at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University.
Our Research Interests
![](https://sites.northwestern.edu/hapticsgroup/files/2023/11/PixeLite3.jpg)
Haptic Interface
Wearable haptic array, Touchbot, and surface haptics
![](https://sites.northwestern.edu/hapticsgroup/files/2023/08/robot-dexterity.png)
Robot Dexterity
Shape-Based Remote Manipulation (SBRM) to overcome communication delays
![](https://sites.northwestern.edu/hapticsgroup/files/2023/06/high-speed-electroadhesive.png)
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
![Crains](https://sites.northwestern.edu/hapticsgroup/files/2023/06/Crains.jpg)
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