As vision is the science of seeing and auditory is science of hearing, haptics is the science of touching. As light is the basis of vision and sound wave is the basis of auditory, contact forces are the basis of haptics. Contact mechanics play an important role in haptics. For a detailed explanantion on what haptics is, follow this link.

In our definition, haptics is pertaining to the sensing and manipulation using touch between human and machine, machine and machine, or human and human in a virtual, teleoperated, or even real environments.

Branches of Haptics:

Haptics is an interdisciplinary research field. We define haptics as -- the study of sensing and manipulation through touch. We use a variety of methods to look for the general principles that we use to explore, represent, and interact with objects. We not only study how humans explore and interact with objects, but also how machines do so.

The Touch Lab at IIT Madras came into existance in June 2005. The goals of our research are to

1. understand human haptics
2. develop machine haptics, and
3. enhance human-machine interactions.

The interactions can not-only between human and machines in real space, but also in virtual reality and teleoperator systems.

To gain a deeper understanding of human haptics, multidisciplinary investigations involving skin biomechanics, neurophysiology, psychophysics, motor control, and computational models are employed.

The research works in this laboratory are classified in to three broad areas.

1. Human Haptics - to understand human haptics mechanisms
2. Machine Haptics, - to develop machines for haptics feedback, and
3. Computer Haptics - to enhance human-machine interactions.

Some of the research works in each of this area carried out in our lab are listed here:

Human Haptics

1. Three Radial Artery Pulse Sensor Design for Siddha Based Disease Diagnosis [link]
2. Correlation between Two Point Discrimination with other measures of Sensory loss in Diabetic Mellitus Patients [link]
3. Comparison of Law of mobility in Upper and Lower Extremities of Diabetic patients [link]
4. A Study of Foot and Ankle Joint Mobility among Diabetic Subjects[link]
5. Automation of Monitoring Hypnotic Analgesia [link]

Machine Haptics

1. Combat Tactile Jacket [link]
2. Hybrid 1DOF Haptic Device [link]
3. DC motor damping: A Strategy to increase Passive Stiffness of Haptic Devices [link]

Computer Haptics

1. Tangible Images [link]
2. Recordable Haptic textures [link]

Medical Simulations

1. Haptic Guided Laparoscopic Simulation [link]
2. Catheter Insertion Simulator [link]
3. Virtual Tissue Cutting [link]

Demos

1. A Simple Catheter Insertion Simulation [Report]
2. Our Hybrid Haptic Device [Paper]
3. Tangible Images [Communicated Paper]
4. Combat Tactile Jacket [Paper]
5. Laparoscopic Simulator with Haptic Guidance. [M.Tech Thesis]
6. Voxel Features [PhD Thesis Abstract]

Spin-off Research Foundation

1. Varma Research Foundation