Astrid Kappers

Astrid Kappers is a full professor of Fundamental and Applied Haptics at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). She is an expert on human perception, both haptics and vision. Her research has always had a strong fundamental focus, but recently, she has also been involved in more applied research. One important issue is that human perception is often not veridical, whereas that is usually taken for granted when designing man-machine interfaces. Although humans are flexible and well able to learn how to deal with the pecularities of the devices they are working with, making the interaction more intuitive will eventually save time and energy (of the human) and improve safety.

Her research focusses on the following topics:

• Understanding human interaction with devices with a focus on haptic aspects
• Quantifying human capabilities of haptic discrimination
• Relating haptic perception to physical properties of materials
• Investigate how haptic interaction can be made more intuitive
• Investigate the usefulness of individual design specifications

Fundamental understanding of touch and haptic perception is of scientific importance, but is also essential for applications such as prosthetic and robotic hands/arms, teleoperation, telesurgery, aids for the visually impaired, man-machine interaction and haptic simulators (such as training devices for operators, surgeons, dentists, etc.). As worldwide interest in haptic technology is increasing rapidly, this field of quantitative research on haptic perception is of eminent importance.