Dr. Amit Bhardwaj

First of all, thanks for visiting my home page. I work in the field of haptics- a study of sense of touch. Unlike our other senses like vision and hearing, smell and taste, the sense of touch (i.e., haptics) remained unexplored for a long time. Since last three decades, it has emerged as an active area of research for the scientific community. In the haptics literature, broadly, there is a mention of three types of haptics - human haptics, machine haptics and computer haptics. When a user touches an object, the interaction information is conveyed to the brain through the sensory system. The brain computes the necessary force which is given back to activate the muscles for the hand or arm movements. Human haptics deals with the study of this human sensorimotor loop and issues related to human perception of the sense of touch. Machine haptics deals with the study of design and construction of electro-mechanical devices which can effectively replace or augment human touch. In order to augment touch in a virtual environment, it is needed to design and develop algorithms and software which can compute interaction forces and simulate physical properties of the virtual objects. Computer haptics deals with all the related aspects. Hence, research in haptics is multidisciplinary in nature, involving control, robotics, computer science/engineering, psychophysics, neurophysiology and human motor control. There are various interesting and challenging applications of haptics, especially for teleoperation applications like in medical surgery, performing hazardous tasks and exploring space activities using a remotely controlled robot.

I am primarily interested in computer haptics and human haptics. My work is also closely associated with the fields of augmented/virtual reality, human computer interaction and robotics. I am looking for hardworking and motivated masters and PhD students. Students who want to contribute to a new research field like haptics, feel free to contact me any time.