What is Computer Haptics and CHAi3D
About Haptics The essential nature of touch is connection. We use our hands to explore and understand our world by feeling the materials, textures, and shapes that compose every object in it. Our sense of touch provides a rich variety of information about the hardness, softness, malleability, or rigidity of these objects, and helps us identify the effort needed to manipulate them. Haptics is an emerging technology that involves transmitting digital information through the sense of touch. This hands-on form of interaction is achieved by using small actuated interfaces called haptic devices that apply force, vibration, and motion to the user. Haptics (from the Greek {haptesthai} meaning to touch) was first introduced in the early 20th century by psychophysicists to label the sub-field of their studies that addressed human touch-based perception and manipulation. During the 1970s and 1980s significant research efforts in a completely different field, robotics, began to focus on manipulati