Imagine you could feel your pet's fur on a Zoom call, the fabric of the clothes you are considering purchasing online, or tissues in medical images. We are all familiar with the impact of digitization of audio and visual information in our daily lives - every time we take videos or pictures on our phones. Yet, there is no such equivalent for our sense of touch. This talk will encompass my scientific efforts in digitizing naturalistic tactile information for the last decade. I will explain the methodologies and interfaces we have been developing with my team and collaborators for capturing, encoding, and recreating the perceptually salient features of tactile textures for active bare-finger interactions. I will also discuss current challenges, future research paths, and potential applications in tactile digitization. 

Bio:

Yasemin Vardar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cognitive Robotics at the Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), where she directs the Haptic Interface Technology Lab. She was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Germany); she earned her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Koç University (Turkey) in 2018. Her research interests focus on understanding human touch and developing haptic interface technologies. Her awards include the 2021 NWO VENI Grant, the 2018 Eurohaptics Best Ph.D. Thesis Award, and the Best Poster Presentation Award at IEEE WHC. She is currently a co-chair of the Technical Committee on Haptics.