Events

Seminar: Tactile perception in and outside our body

Date: 12 October 2017 14:00 - 15:00

Location: QMUL, Mile End campus, graduate centre, GC101

Seminar: Tactile perception in and outside our body

by Professor Vincent Hayward (University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France; Centre for Advanced Studies, University of London, UK)

When: Thu, Oct 12, 14:00-15:00

Where: QMUL, Mile End campus, graduate centre, GC101

Title: Tactile perception in and outside our body

Abstract. The mechanics of contact and friction is to touch what sound waves are to audition, and what light waves are to vision. The complex physics of contact and its consequences inside our sensitive tissues, however, differ in fundamental ways from the physics of acoustics and optics. The astonishing variety of phenomena resulting from the contact between fingers and objects is likely to have fashioned our somatosensory system at all its levels of it organisation, from early mechanics to cognition. The talk will illustrate this idea through a variety of specific examples that show how surface physics shape the messages that are sent to the brain, providing completely new opportunities for applications of human machines interfaces.

Bio. Vincent Hayward is a professor (on leave) at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris. Before, he was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University, Montréal, Canada, where I became a full Professor in 2006 and was the Director of the McGill Centre for Intelligent Machines from 2001 to 2004. Hayward is interested in haptic device design, human perception, and robotics; and I am a Fellow of the IEEE. He was a European Research Council Grantee from 2010 to 2016. Since January 2017, Hayward is a Professor of Tactile Perception and Technology at the School of Advanced Studies of the University of London, supported by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship.

Website:  https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=YWv1lIkAAAAJ