Haptic perception along the road from basic science to application

Abstract

I did not enter the field of haptic perception; rather, I was thrust into it during the 1980s by Susan Lederman, who along with my colleague Jack Loomis, was one of the few psychological scientists who actually studied this arcane sensory system! In our early work, Susan and I demonstrated that objects could be quickly and easily identified by the sense of touch, and we described the purposive, active nature of exploration that served as the basis for this capability. This solid cognitive science happened to coincide with new developments in engineering and neuroscience that increased the visibility of haptics as a basic and applied research field and led to the first interdisciplinary conference of this type. Of course, attendees there could not begin to envision how interest in research on touch would develop into the dynamic scene we see today. My own interests in haptic perception have moved increasingly from the basic science with which I began to applications areas such as commerce, assistive technology, and surgical devices. My talk will describe this trajectory.