"Haptics - Giving User Interface a Sense of Touch"

Presented by Dr. Christophe Ramstein, Senior Vice President, Research and Engineering, Immersion Corporation

Date: Wednesday, 15 June 2005
Time: 6:30pm - refreshments, 7:00pm - talk
Location: Hewlett Packard (see directions), Pruneridge and Wolfe, Cupertino, Bldg. 48, Oak Room.
Cost: Free and open to all who wish to attend, but membership is only $10/year.

Topic:
Haptics is the science of touch. In the real world, we use our sense of touch thousands of times a day, consciously and subconsciously. Everyday tasks that we take for granted like dialing a touch-tone phone, finding first gear in a manual transmission car, or playing a musical instrument like a guitar or a piano all rely heavily on the tactile and kinesthetic cues we get. But in the computing world, we typically are forced to rely on just two senses ­ sight and hearing. Haptics engages a third sense ­ touch ­ to give you a more complete, intuitive experience. Instantly, cell phones become more informative and easier to navigate. Games become more realistic and exciting. Medical simulators become more valuable training tools. Computer aided design becomes more interactive and cost-effective. And automobile dashboards become simultaneously more advanced and more intuitive. These and many more applications of haptics will be discussed.

About the Speaker:
Christophe Ramstein is Immersion's senior vice president of engineering and research, and president of Immersion Canada, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary. Since 1988, Ramstein has been designing, developing, and evangelizing haptic systems, adding synthetic touch to the human-computer interaction experience. In 1988, he completed a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics at the Institute Joseph Fourier and, in 1991, completed a Ph.D. in computer sciences at the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France. From 1992 to 1996, he managed major R&D projects in the field of haptics and simulation with Industry Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, McGill University, and private companies. He authored many patents and innovative technical papers presented at international conferences. In 1994, he demonstrated the first multimodal system allowing visually impaired users to freely navigate the Windows desktop with a haptic mouse. In 1996, he founded Haptic Technologies, Inc. focusing on the engineering and production of programmable haptic systems. When Immersion Corporation acquired Haptic Technologies in 2000, Ramstein became senior director of software and driver development. In 2001, he became general manager of Immersion Canada, and in October 2002 was promoted to vice president of Immersion's engineering group.