Sean Follmer

Towards a goal of more human-centered computing, I believe that interaction must be grounded in the physical world and leverage our innate abilities for spatial cognition and dexterous manipulation with our hands. By creating interfaces that allow for richer physical interaction, such as bimanual, whole hand haptic exploration, these systems can help people with different abilities (e.g., children, people with visual impairments, or even expert designers) better understand and interact with information. My work in Human Computer Interaction addresses a central challenge in the widespread adoption of such haptic user interfaces – how can we create physical interactive displays that update dynamically, and what are the interaction techniques and enabling technologies necessary to support such systems? I will focus the talk on recent enabling technologies (including electrostatic adhesion and perceptual illusions) to make these devices low cost and high resolution. Specifically, I will highlight the need to better integrate the development of these devices with a sensorimotor control perspective in order to improve perceived performance despite physical device limitations.