Workshop
IEEE 2004 International Conference of Robotics and Automation
April 27 2004, 8:30AM to 6PM
New Orleans, LA, USA

Organizers

The goal of the workshop is to bring together experts from various branches of the robotics, virtual-reality and human studies communities to address the study of physical interaction between hands (real, virtual, or remote) and objects.
Multiple points of contact between the fingers (whether they be robotic, human, or virtual) and an object are typically required for perception, stable grasping and manipulation. The need to understand such multi-point interactions arises in many different fields of study including robotic grasping and manipulation, virtualized haptics and human psychophysics. While the problem of robotic and virtual interaction with physical objects has been the subject of research for many years, the specific problems of modeling, analyzing, and utilizing multiple-point contact has yet to be addressed from a unified perspective.
This workshop will provide a forum in which we will share our complementary perspectives on multi-point contact. It is our hope that the discussion of results and questions from our varied points of view will engender a more unified understanding of the field and facilitate productive cooperation.