Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

This article is the second of a two-part series intended to be an introduction to haptic interfaces, their construction, and application design. Haptic interactions employ mechanical, programmed physical devices that can be used for human-computer communication via the sense of touch. In Part I of this series, we focused on the devices themselves: the classes of hardware schemes currently available or envisioned, the software components that drive them, and specific examples that can be built on the kitchen table. Here in Part II, we broach a topic that is coming into its own; between the vision of a particular utility that haptic feedback theoretically should enable and the hardware capable of delivering the required sensations is the problem of designing the interaction in a usable way.