Personal Touch

Seminar

A Personal Touch: Adventures in Haptic Technology
Dr Gijs Huisman, Amsterdam University of Applied Science’s Digital Society School

Date & Time: June 4^th 2019 at 2pm

Venue: UCL Informatics and Computing (UCLIC), Room 4.05, 66-72 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6EA

Abstract: In this talk I will share my work on haptic technology, in particular haptics applied to social communication, from creating wearable technology for academic research to joining a startup company to create actual products. I will draw on work from psychology to outline my thoughts on social touch (touch between people) and I will show examples of how social touch might be mediated through technology, what implications that may have for distal interactions, and where I see social haptics going in the future.

Hosted by:  IN-TOUCH, UCL Knowledge Lab and UCLIC

Gijs Huisman Bio:
Gijs Huisman is a senior researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science’s Digital Society School (DSS) where he directs research grounded in the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. His research interests revolve around multimodal interaction, embodiment, digital/physical interfaces, and haptics.

Gijs was previously at the Human Media Interaction group and Communication Science group of the University of Twente where he worked on haptics for embodiment in Virtual and Augmented reality and on nature-inspired ambient technology for well-being. His PhD research focussed on how haptic technology can be used for social and affective interaction in mediated communication and in interactions with artificial social entities such as virtual agents and social robots. He also worked on nature-inspired ambient technology for well-being. In addition to his academic work Gijs is co-founder and head of R&D at House of Haptics, a startup company that brings novel haptic solutions to market.