Here is a simple demonstration that illustrates how haptic perception is both quite remarkable and quite under-appreciated: Reach into your pocket or handbag and extract from the clutter therein without looking, mind you"a bill, or a coin, or a set of keys. Even better, locate your car's key fob, find the unlock button and push it’still without looking. Did you succeed? Of course you did. Using a key fob is surely no feat of prestidigitation; yet, it merits our thoughtful consideration. Over 20 years ago, Susan Lederman and Roberta Klatzky showed that humans could use haptics to identify common objects quickly and accurately, and that haptic perception was subserved by a stereotypical set of "exploratory procedures" including enclosure, lateral motion, pressure, contour following, and others. These exploratory procedures are enabled by a hand having some twenty-odd degrees of freedom and tens of thousands of mechanoreceptors, not to mention the vast resources of the central nervous system.

There is evidently a lot more to pulling a key fob from one's pocket than meets the eye (or the fingertip!). Indeed, I believe this illustration helps us understand what haptics is and what a journal on haptics can aspire to accomplish. For example, it teaches us that haptics is interactive. Having another person press a key fob against your outstretched fingers in no way compares to reaching out and touching the fob yourself. Haptic perception arises from the integrated activity of the sensing and movement systems. It involves inputs not only from the skin, but also from the muscles, tendons, and joints. Similarly, the physics underlying haptics is bilateral. For instance, when pushing the unlock button, one cannot unilaterally specify both the motion and force. Causality demands that the button's own mechanical properties contribute to the behavior that emerges. This intimate give-and-take with the environment being sensed stands in marked contrast to vision and audition.

The example also illustrates that the study of haptics is interdisciplinary. Understanding how haptics can be used to identify objects or enable manipulation requires the insights of mechanics, control, psychophysics, cognitive neuroscience, and potentially other disciplines.

Yet, as rich as this example is, something quite important is missing from it. Indeed, one might argue that something is missing from the title of our journal: the word "interface." The agenda of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics (ToH) is decidedly not just about understanding haptics, but goes further to ask how haptic interfaces can be designed, controlled, and used. Pulling a key fob from one's pocket is an example of haptics as it occurs naturally, but we are just as interested in pulling a virtual key fob from a virtual pocket. Well, not really. At least, I'm not aware of anyone who has tackled that particular problem. But similar—and more serious—challenges abound: training medical students using virtual patients, testing assemblability of complex machines before they are manufactured, improving the usability and functionality of human-computer interfaces, and so on.

Of course, if one really did want to pull a virtual key fob from a virtual pocket, I think it is fair to say that it could not be done with today's haptic technology. This highlights the final lesson that I hope to extract from the example: Haptics is a field still in its infancy. Few people reading this will have known that the field existed even a decade ago. My own first exposure to a programmable haptic interface occurred scarcely more than two decades ago when my lab mate Bernard (Dov) Adelstein programmed his powered joystick (which he built to study tremor suppression) to emulate virtual walls and detents. Our field has seen remarkable advances in the years since, and even the development of a burgeoning market for haptic devices, but there still remain many gaps in our knowledge, and many interfaces that we wish we could create, if only we knew how.

Against this backdrop, it is hard to imagine a more opportune time to launch a new journal in haptics. The field is dynamic, growing, and relevant to the concerns of society, yet facing many challenges. This virtually guarantees that important scientific and engineering advances will be made in the years to come. The role of the ToH will be to provide a forum in which these advances can be disseminated to a broad, interdisciplinary community of researchers. Moreover, we should expect that ToH will accelerate the advancement of haptics by promoting the exchange of ideas and archiving key developments.

As such, ToH will strive to represent the breadth of work that haptics comprises: device design and control; modeling and rendering; telemanipulation; tactile, thermal, kinesthetic, and multimodal interfaces; perception and human motor control; human-computer interface; cognitive neuroscience; and applications in diverse areas: medicine, rehabilitation, training, computer-aided design, data visualization, mobile communications and entertainment (to name a few).

I believe that ToH also has a special duty to provide education, not just via publication of original research, but also via publication of cross-disciplinary surveys and tutorials as well as special issues that focus on emerging areas. Readers will find instances of all of these in the first several issues of ToH, and I warmly encourage submissions along these lines.

The need for an archival journal in the field of haptics has been recognized for some time. Blake Hannaford's visionary creation of the electronic journal Haptics-e was perhaps the earliest indication. But, the need for print publications remained, leading to a plethora of special issues. Domenico Prattichizzo has documented more than 40 special issues in haptics and closely related topics during the decade from 1998 to 2007. It was not until the formation of the Technical Committee on Haptics (TCH) in 2006, however, that the world-wide community of haptics researchers had sufficient organization and leadership to launch a new journal. In the following year, a great many people contributed their effort to this process, but Hong Tan, chair of the TCH, and William Harwin with Karon MacLean (Publications Vice-Chair of the TCH) who led the journal formation efforts, deserve special mention.

ToH is a joint effort of three IEEE Societies: Computer, Robotics and Automation, and Consumer Electronics. It receives primary financial support from the first two, and is published by the Computer Society. It is governed by a Management Committee representing all three societies, and chaired by Peter Luh.

ToH began operations in October 2007 when Associate Editors-in-Chief Susan Lederman and Domenico Prattichizzo, and I began to make a myriad of little decisions, and some bigger ones too. No doubt the biggest of these was the appointment of a team of Associate Editors (AEs): Federico Barbagli, Cagatay Basdogan, Martin Buss, Marc Ernst, Antonio Frisoli, Brent Gillespie, Danny Grant, Matthias Harders, Vincent Hayward, Lynette Jones, Hiroyuki Kajimoto, Astrid Kappers, Abderrahmane Kheddar, Ming Lin, Karon Maclean, Brian Miller, Haruo Noma, Allison Okamura, Marcia O'Malley, Jeha Ryu, Hong Tan, and Yasuyoshi Yokokohji. This is one decision of which I am quite proud. The AEs, who are introduced in this issue, are all people who have made important contributions to haptics through their scholarship as well as their service. Moreover, this team reflects the geographic and disciplinary diversity of our field.

Each submission to ToH is examined by our journal administrator, Hilary Price (hkprice@northwestern.edu), and by myself (colgate@northwestern.edu). After that, either Susan, Domenico, or I (AEIC/EIC) will assign it to an AE who will select and correspond with reviewers. The AE will make a recommendation based on the reviews as well as his or her own assessment. This is sent to the AEIC/EIC who makes a decision and communicates it to the authors. This tiered structure enables us to maintain the anonymity of the AE until the conclusion of the review process, and to ensure that each paper receives a thorough and fair evaluation. Moreover, our editorial board is strongly committed to a timely and constructive review process.

ToH will be published biannually this year and will move to a quarterly next year, and its volumes will not be among the thicker ones on your bookshelf. I hope that they will, however, be among the most treasured! Over time, the thickness and frequency of these volumes will surely be a reflection of the field itself—a field that I fully expect to thrive. With this in mind, I would like to close by encouraging your participation as a subscriber to, reader of, reviewer for, and contributor to the IEEE Transactions on Haptics.

J. Edward Colgate

Editor-in-Chief

Susan Lederman is a full professor in the Department of Psychology, with cross-appointments in the School of Computing and the Centre for Neuroscience at Queen's University in Canada. She holds the Queen's University Research Chair in Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience. Amongst her notable distinctions, she has been a Killam Research Fellow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She has been an associate or consulting editor for numerous journals, including the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, Perception & Psychophysics, the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, and Presence, Teleoperators, & Virtual Environments. Her research program has spanned a wide range of topics that pertain to human sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and sensory-guided motor processing. More specifically, her research and publications have focused on the tactile psychophysics of texture (real and virtual), haptic, and multisensory processing of objects and their properties, haptic space perception, and the sensory guided control of grasping and manipulation. Most recently, she has been studying haptic face processing. She has also applied the results of her scientific research toward the solution of a variety of real-world problems, such as the design of a raised tactile feature and code that allows blind individuals to denominate Canadian banknotes by hand, and the design of haptic and multisensory interfaces for virtual environments and teleoperation.

Domenico Prattichizzo received the master's degree in electronics engineering and the PhD degree in robotics and automation from the University of Pisa in 1991 and 1995, respectively. In 1994, he was a visiting scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. Since 2002, he has been an associate professor of robotics in the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione at the University of Siena. He is also a coordinator of the Robotics and Systems Laboratory at the same university. His main research interests are in haptics, grasping and dexterous manipulation, control of robots and mechanical systems, computer vision and geometric control theory. He is the author of more than 150 papers in the area of robotics and automatic control, coeditor of two books by STAR, Springer Tracks in Advanced Robotics, Springer (2003 and 2005), and guest editor of the special issue on robotics and neuroscience in the Brain Research Bulletin (2008). Since 2007, he has been an associate editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics. Since 2006, he has been a vice-chair for special issues and workshops of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics. Since 2006, he has been the chair of the Italian Chapter of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.

Federico Barbagli received the MS degree in computer science from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1998, and the PhD degree in robotics from Scuola Superiore S.Anna in Pisa, Italy, in 2002. He is currently a senior engineering fellow at Hansen Medical, a medical robotics company in Mountain View, California, and a consultant assistant professor in Stanford University's Computer Science Department. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Stanford Robotics Lab from 2002 to 2005, and an assistant professor at the University of Siena, Italy, from 2002 to 2004. His research interests include haptic interfaces (rendering and controls), medical robotics, and human-machine interaction.

Cagatay Basdogan received the PhD degree from Southern Methodist University in 1994. He is a member of faculty in College of Engineering at Koc University. Before joining Koc University, he was a senior member of technical staff in the Information and Computer Science Division of NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology from 1999 to 2002. He moved to JPL from Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a research scientist and principal investigator at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics and a member of the MIT Touch Lab from 1996 to 1999. He worked for Musculographics Inc. in the Northwestern University Research Park for two years before moving to MIT. Dr. Basdogan conducts research and development in the general areas of human-machine interfaces, computer graphics, virtual reality technology, biomechanics, control systems, and mechatronics. In particular, he is interested in the applications of haptics to medical simulation, robotic path planning, micro/nano/optical telemanipulation, molecular docking, information visualization, and understanding of human perception and cognition.

Martin Buss received the diploma engineer degree in electrical engineering in 1990 from the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, and the doctor of engineering degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1994. In 2000, he finished his habilitation in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. In 1988, he was a research student at the Science University of Tokyo, Japan, for one year. As a postdoctoral researcher, he stayed with the Department of Systems Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, in 1994-1995. From 1995-2000, he was a senior research assistant and lecturer in the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technical University Munich, Germany. From 2000-2003, he was appointed full professor, head of the control systems group, and deputy director of the Institute of Energy and Automation Technology, Faculty IV—Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Technical University Berlin, Germany. Since 2003, he has been a full professor (chair) in the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, Technische Universität München, Germany. In 2006, he was appointed as the coordinator of the DFG Excellence Research Cluster "Cognition for Technical Systems"—CoTeSys. His research interests include automatic control, mechatronics, multimodal human-system interfaces, optimization, nonlinear, and hybrid discrete-continuous systems.

Marc Ernst received the PhD degree from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics for investigations on the human visuomotor behavior. For this work he was awarded the Attempto-Prize (2000) from the University of Tübingen and the Otto- Hahn-Medaille (2001) from the Max-Planck-Society. Starting in 2000, he spent almost two years as a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Professor Martin Banks on psychophysical experiments and computational models investigating the integration of visual-haptic information. At the end of 2001, he returned to the Max Planck Institute. He studied physics in Heidelberg and Frankfurt/Main. He is currently the principle investigator of several international grants including the two European Projects ImmerSence and CyberWalk. He is leader of the independent Research Group "Multisensory Perception and Action" at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. The group is interested in human multimodal perception and sensorimotor integration. Methodologically, his group mainly uses quantitative psychophysical and neuropsychological methods together with Virtual Reality techniques and Bayesian models of sensory perception.

Antonio Frisoli (Eng., PhD) received the MS "summa cum laude" in mechanical engineering, specialization in robotics, from the University of Pisa, Italy, and the Graduate Diploma in engineering from Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (SSSA) in Pisa, Italy, in 1998. In 2002, he received the PhD degree in robotics and teleoperation in virtual environments from SSSA. Since 2003, has been an assistant professor of applied mechanics at SSSA, where he is head of the research division "Virtual Reality and Telerobotic Systems" of the PERCRO laboratory. His research interests are in the field of haptic interfaces, multimodal perception, modeling and control of robotic systems, robotic assisted neurorehabilitation, kinematics, and cognitive robotics. He is author of more than 90 publications in the area of robotics and virtual reality. He is the current vice-chair for info and dissemination of the Haptic Technical Committee and acts as reviewer of several scientific international journals and conferences of robotics and virtual reality. He is currently involved in several international and national research projects. He is scientifically responsible for SSSA of the "Presenccia" FET EU project and "Decision in Motion" Strep project in the area of Cognitive Systems, and he is currently responsible for a national funded RTD project for the application of robotics and virtual reality technologies in neuro-rehabilitation.

Brent Gillespie received the BS degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Davis, in 1986, the master's degree in music (piano performance) from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1989, and the PhD degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1996. He held a US National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University from 1996-1999. He subsequently joined the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he is currently an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Gillespie received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2001. His research interests include haptic interface and teleoperator control, haptic rendering, human motor behavior, and robot-assisted rehabilitation after neurological injury.

Danny Grant received a doctorate degree in electrical engineering from McGill University in 1999, with a focus on control and robotics. From 1994 to 1995, as a researcher at the Centre for Intelligent Machines in Montreal, he designed and constructed an end effecter for a seven degrees-of-freedom force feedback controller. In 1997, he consulted with Haptic Technologies in designing and patenting high-resolution optical sensors for an award-winning force feedback mouse. Since 2000, he has been an adjunct professor in robotics at McGill University and has also held various research and research-management positions at Immersion Corporation, a leading developer and licensor of touch feedback technology. Currently, as vice president of Research at Immersion, he is responsible for developing and implementing the company's haptics research programs. He is a foremost authority on haptic technologies, and their applications, including experience in collaborating with researchers to bring their technology to various markets such as: automotive, consumer electronics, medical simulation, and mobile communications. He is the author of several publications on the design of haptic devices, interfaces, and controls, currently holds just under 50 patents and patent applications, and is a senior member of the IEEE

Matthias Harders studied computer science with a focus in medical informatics at the University of Hildesheim, Technical University of Braunschweig, and University of Houston. He received the PhD degree from ETH Zurich in 2002, and his habilitation in 2007. He is a lecturer and senior researcher in the Computer Vision Lab at ETH Zurich, and leader of the Virtual Reality in Medicine Group. His current research focuses on surgical simulation, human computer interaction with medical data, and haptic rendering. For his work, he has received the ETH-TIT Award 2003 and the CAOS Award 2006. He is cofounder of the EuroHaptics Conference, the EuroHaptics Society, and the IEEE RAS/CS Haptics Technical Committee. He acts as associate editor for the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, as well as for the IEEE Transactions on Haptics. He is cofounder of the ETH spin-off company VirtaMed which focuses on the development of surgical training simulations. He has been chair of the PURS 2000 and ISBMS 2006 meetings, and program chair of EuroHaptics 2004 and WorldHaptics 2006. Dr. Harders is currently the chair of the IEEE CS/RAS Technical Committee on Haptics.

Vincent Hayward received the Ing. degree from Ecole Centrale de Nantes in 1978, and the PhD degree in computer science in 1981 from the University of Paris. He was a visiting assistant professor at Purdue University in 1982, Chargé de recherches at CNRS, France, from 1983-1986, and professeur invité at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2006. He is now a professor of electrical and computer engineering at McGill University. Dr. Hayward is interested in haptic device design and applications, perception, and robotics. He is leading the Haptics Laboratory at McGill University and was the Director of the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines (2001-2004). He is a co-Founder of the Experimental Robotics Symposia, Program Vice-Chair 1998 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, Program Vice-Chair ISR2000, past associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, Governing board member of Haptics-e, an Editorial board member of the ACM Transaction on Applied Perception and the IEEE Transactions on Haptics. Dr. Hayward received several best paper and research awards, including the NASA Space Act Tech Brief Award (1991) and the E. (Ben) & Mary Hochhausen Award for Research in Adaptive Technology For Blind and Visually Impaired Persons (2002). He became a fellow of the IEEE in 2008.

Lynette Jones is a principal research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her research is focused on the development of wearable wirelessly controlled vibrotactile displays that can be used for navigation and communication in real and simulated environments. This entails both basic and applied research on tactile perception and on the mechanical properties of human skin. An additional research area is the development of thermal displays that simulate the properties of different materials and can be used to facilitate object identification in virtual environments or in teleoperated robotic systems. The thermal models implemented in the thermal displays built in her laboratory have been evaluated in psychophysical and physiological experiments that have attempted to understand the basic mechanisms involved in human thermal perception.

Hiroyuki Kajimoto received the MS degree in mathematical engineering and information physics from The University of Tokyo, Japan, in 2001 and the PhD degree in information science and technology in 2004. From 2003 to 2006, he worked as a research associate. Since 2006, he worked as an associate professor at the University of Electro-Communications, Japan. His research interests lie in the field of tactile display and sensor, human interface and virtual reality.

Astrid Kappers studied experimental physics at Utrecht University. She received the PhD degree from Eindhoven University of Technology. Since 1989, she has been with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Utrecht University. Her research takes place in the Helmholtz Institute. Her research interests include haptic and visual perception. In 2003, she won the prestigious VICI grant. She was promoted to full professor in 2005.

Abderrahmane Kheddar received the DEA (MSc degree by research) and the PhD degree in robotics and computer science, both from the University of Paris 6, France. He is currently a professor at the University of Evry, France, where he created and headed the haptic and virtual reality group. Since 2003, in the frame of his CNRS secondment he took a director of research position and is the codirector of the AIST/CNRS Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory (JRL) in Tsukuba, Japan. His research interests include chronologically teleoperation and telerobotics, haptic interaction with virtual and machined avatars (sensing and display), humanoids (contact planning, haptic, dynamic control), and haptic displays technology. He was the coordinator of the CNRS specific action on collision detection and is the national coordinator of CNRS specific program on haptics. He cochaired the Touch-HapSys workshop on "Touch and Haptics" at IEEE/RSJ IROS '04 in Japan. He was the general chair of EuroHaptics 2006 for its first edition in France. He is the secretary of the EuroHaptics Society which settled in Paris in 2006 and a member of the EuroHaptics Conference steering committee. He is a founding member and recently senior advisor of the IEEE-RAS chapter on Haptics. He is coordinating the ROBOT@CWE FP6 EC project, member of the INTUITION European network of excellence on virtual reality, member of the TOUCH-HapSys and ImmerSence European projects dedicated to haptics.

Ming C. Lin received the PhD degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the Beverly W. Long Distiguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. She has received several honors and awards, including the US National Science Foundation Young Faculty Career Award in 1995, the Honda Research Initiation Award in 1997, the UNC/IBM Junior Faculty Development Award in 1999, the UNC Hettleman Award for Scholarly Achievements in 2003, and six best paper awards at international conferences on computer graphics and virtual reality. Her research interests include physically-based modeling, haptics, real-time 3D graphics for virtual environments, robotics, and geometric computing. She has (co)authored more than 170 refereed publications, coedited/authored three books, "Applied Computation Geometry" by Springer-Verlag, "High-Fidelity Haptic Rendering" by Morgan-Claypool, and "Haptic Rendering: Foundations, Algorithms, and Applications" by A K Peters. She has served on more than 70 program committees of leading conferences on virtual reality, computer graphics, robotics, haptics and computational geometry, and cochaired more than 15 international conferences and workshops. She is the associate editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, a member of four editorial boards, and a guest editor for more than 10 special issues of scientific journals and technical magazines. She has also served on four steering committees and advisory boards of international conferences, as well as six technical advisory committees constituted by government organizations and industry.

Karon MacLean received the BSc degree in biology and mechanical engineering from Stanford and the MSc and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT. She became associate professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia, Canada, with a courtesy appointment in mechanical engineering following time as a research scientist at Interval Research, Palo Alto, California. Her research is in ubiquitous haptic and multimodal interfaces, bringing together robotics, interaction, attention, perception, and affect. She was a Peter Wall Early Career Scholar (2001), Izzak Walton Killam Memorial Faculty Fellow (2007), and is the Charles A. McDowell Award recipient (2008). She was a founding member of several editorial and advisory boards, will cochair the IEEE Haptics Symposium (with Allison Okamura) in 2010-2012, and contributed to the formation of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics.

Brian Miller joined the R/D Department at Computer Motion Inc., after receiving the PhD degree from Northwestern University. From 2000-2003, he served as the software technical lead for the Zeus surgical robotic system. In July 2003, Computer Motion merged with Intuitive Surgical and Dr. Miller transitioned to a senior systems analyst position in the Applied Research Department to lead the remote telesurgery and telementoring portfolio. In this position, he was responsible for managing and developing remote surgical technology as part of research efforts focusing on future technology. In January 2007, Dr. Miller formed the Surgical System Networking group within Intuitive Surgical to productize remote surgical capabilities.

Haruo Noma received the BE and PhD degrees from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, in 1989 and 1994, respectively. In 1994, he joined ATR, where he was working on the force display, locomotion interface, their applications to the manipulation in virtual space, sensor network system, and MEMS sensor. At present, he is a group leader of ATR Knowledge Science Lab. He is a member of the IEEE and the ACM.

Allison M. Okamura received the BS degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, and the MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University in 1996 and 2000, respectively, all in mechanical engineering. From 1996 to 1998, she was also a research engineer at Immersion Corporation. She is currently an associate professor of mechanical engineering and the Decker Faculty Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. She is associate director of the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics and a thrust leader of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology. Her awards include the 2005 IEEE Robotics Automation Society Early Academic Career Award, the 2004 US NSF CAREER Award, the 2004 JHU George E. Owen Teaching Award, and the 2003 JHU Diversity Recognition Award. She cochairs the Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environments and Teleoperator Systems in 2008 and 2010, and is Vice Chair for Finance of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics. Her research interests include haptics, teleoperation, medical robotics, virtual environments and simulators, prosthetics, rehabilitation engineering, and engineering education.

Marcia O'Malley received the BS degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 1996, and the MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 1999 and 2001, respectively. In 2001, she joined the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department at Rice University, where she is currently an assistant professor. Her current research interests include nanorobotic manipulation with haptic (force) feedback, haptic feedback and shared control between robotic devices and their human users for training and rehabilitation in virtual environments, control methodologies for improved performance of haptic interfaces and teleoperator systems, and educational haptics. Her awards include the 2004 US Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the 2005 US National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the 2008 Rice University George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching. Additionally, she is cochair of both the ASME Dynamic Systems and Controls Division Robotics Technical Committee and the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics.

Jeha Ryu received the BS degree from Seoul National University, Korea, in 1982, the MS degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 1984, and the PhD degree from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, in 1991. He has been a professor in the Mechatronics Department at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) since 1994. He was a visiting researcher at Virtual Reality Lab. CAIP center, Rutgers University, New Jersey, from 2001-2002. He is the director of Center for Haptics Technology and Lab. for Human-Machine-Computer Interface (HuManComIn) at GIST. His research interests include haptic rendering, haptic interaction control, design and control of haptic devices, as well as haptic modeling, authoring, and broadcasting.

Hong Z. Tan received the bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and earned the master and doctorate degrees, both in electrical engineering and computer science, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering with courtesy appointments in mechanical engineering and psychological sciences at Purdue University. Her research focuses on haptic human-machine interfaces and haptic perception. She was a co-organizer (with Blake Hannaford) of the International Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems from 2003 to 2005. She served as the founding chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics, a home for the international interdisciplinary haptics research community, from 2006 to 2008. She is currently an associate editor of Presence: Teleoperators & Vitual Environments, the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, and the IEEE Transactions on Haptics.

Yasuyoshi Yokokohji received the BS and MS degrees in precision engineering in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and the PhD degree in mechanical engineering in 1991, all from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. From 1988 to 1989, he was a research associate in the Automation Research Laboratory, Kyoto University. From 1989 to 1992, he was a research associate in the Division of Applied Systems Science, Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University. From 1994 to 1996, he was a visiting research scholar at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University. His current research interests are robotics and virtual reality including robotic hands, teleoperation systems and haptic interfaces. Dr. Yokokohji is a member of the Institute of Systems, Control, and Information Engineers (Japan), the Robotics Society of Japan, the Society of Instruments and Control Engineers (Japan), the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Biomechanisms of Japan, the Virtual Reality Society of Japan, the IEEE, and the ACM.