Electrical & Computer Engineering Professor Yon Visell's research group specializes in the emerging field of haptics - the science of applying tactile, or touch, sensation to human interaction with computers. Visell and his team developed a technology that has achieved for the first time the ability to catalog patterns of vibration on the skin of the hand at the finest resolution. 

They designed a custom sensor network that is worn on the hand and captures displacements of the skin when it comes in contact with objects, in the complex context of hand movement such as grasping an object, at several points along the skin and at a very fast resolution. "This makes it possible to produce touch experiences or alternatively capture touch sensations, and that's going to open up a large number of applications," said Visell.

Haptics is an area of research that didn't exist half a century ago, according to Visell, when the UCSB College of Engineering was first established - a testament to the new directions our engineers are taking with technology.

Watch our video interview with Yon Visell, and read a feature article about the study published this year in PNAS:
+ A Sensitive Subject: UCSB researchers catalog for the first time patterns of vibration on the skin of the hand