Katherine J. Kuchenbecker directs the Haptic Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. She was previously an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she held the Class of 1940 Bicentennial Endowed Term Chair and a secondary appointment in Computer and Information Science. Kuchenbecker earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 2006 and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research centers on haptic interfaces, which enable a user to touch virtual and distant objects as though they were real and within reach, as well as haptic sensing systems, which allow robots to physically interact with objects and people.
Kuchenbecker delivered a TEDYouth talk on haptics in 2012, and she has received several honors including a 2009 NSF CAREER Award, the 2012 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Academic Early Career Award, and a 2014 Penn Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. Her team has won various best paper and best demonstration awards, and she frequently gives keynote talks at conferences. She was co-chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics from 2014 to 2017, and she co-chaired the IEEE Haptics Symposium in 2016 and 2018.
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Although a human can move his or her fingertip with six degrees of freedom (three for position and three for orientation), displaying 6DOF haptic cues continues to escape the capabilities of body-grounded fingertip haptic displays. All six degrees of freedom have been displayed in smaller subsets, so the l...
Development of surface haptic technologies has lately drawn significant attention, in parallel with the growing use of modern electronic devices involving touchscreens. Different haptic scenarios provide active tactile feedback by controlling natural physical phenomena such as contact, friction, and vibrations. However, these system...
The lack of haptic feedback is a potential limitation of existing robotic surgical systems. Members of Dr. Kuchenbecker's group at Penn previously invented a haptic feedback system named VerroTouch that is able to deliver the vibrations of s...
Robotic minimally invasive surgery systems such as the Intuitive Surgical da Vinci system physically separate the surgeon from the surgical tools. As touch cues are known to play a critical role in manipulation tasks, the resulting loss of the sense of touch may affect the speed and ski...
Humans draw on their vast life experience of touching things to make inferences about the objects in their environment; this capability enables one to make haptic judgments before actually touching things. For example, it is effortless to select the correct grip force for picking up a delicate object, or to choose a g...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex condition that impacts many systems in the body, from neurological aspects to physical comorbidities. Children with autism often endu...
Rachael Burns
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
Hasti Seifi
Hyosang Lee
Robert Faulkner
Sophia Haass
Creating haptic experiences often entails inventing, modifying, or selecting specialized hardware. However, experience designers are rarely engineers, and 30 years of haptic inventions are buried in the fragmented literature that describes devices mechanically rather...
Hasti Seifi Farimah Fazlollahi Gunhyuk Park Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
Many modern humanoid robots are designed to operate in human environments, like homes and hospitals. If designed well, such robots could help humans accomplish tasks and lower their physical and/or mental workload. As opposed to having an operator devise control policies and reprogram the robot for every new situation...
Hugs are one of the first forms of contact and affection that humans experience. Not only are hug...
Our first HuggieBot research project showed that people are generally accepting of soft, warm robot hugs...
Human soft-tissue properties vary widely: factors such as the patient's age and health can make enormous differences. As a result, junior medical professionals often have difficulty learning how much force is needed to cut through or puncture a particular type of tissue.
For example, during chest tube insertion, the do...
Being able to cover the entire body of a robot with soft tactile sensors has become an attractive concept in intelligent robotics. Soft, stretchable materials can conform around surfaces and also absorb impacts, which is benefi...
Humans can form an impression of how a new object feels simply by touching its surfaces with the densely innervated skin of the fingertips. Recent research has focused on endowing robots with similar levels of haptic intelligence, but these efforts are usually limited to specifi...
Little is known about the shape and properties of the human finger during haptic interaction, as such situations are difficult to instrument. Interestingly, th...
David Gueorguiev
Dimitrios Tzionas
Michael Black
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
The demand for natural haptic feedback on touch screens such as smartphones and car control panels has been rapidly...
Many scenarios arise wherein the high-frequency accelerations of a tool need to be captured and either portrayed for a human to feel or analyzed by a computer system. For example, this approach provides a simple and realistic way for a surgeon to feel tactile information from a remotely controlled surgical robot. Sim...
Out of the many technologies being applied to healthcare delivery today, augmented reality (AR) is one of the most exciting. We believe AR can be applied to surgical robots to provide surgeo...
The frictional forces we experience when our body interacts with objects provide essential sensory cues that help adapt our behavior. We rely on these sensory cues daily, for example when we feel the smoothness of...
Many situations arise where it is beneficial for a human to control the movements of a robot at a distance, such as handling hazardous materials, doing surgery deep inside the human body, or taking part in remote meetings with other people. In these scenarios, the...
DJing is a musical activity that involves the blending of songs (mixing) and the rythmic manipulation of sounds (scratching). Traditionally, DJs used vinyl records as their music sources. The vibration of a stylus (needle) in the groove of these records produced not just sound, but also subtle haptic sensations that could be fe...
The interaction between a human finger-pad and a physical surface generates not only the tangential friction needed for gripping objects but also a wide variety of perceptual experiences. Finger-surface contact behavior is known to depend on the ...
Saekwang Nam
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
David Gueorguiev
Yasemin Vardar
Researchers worldwide want to discover how to generate compelling tactile sensations on touchscreens to increase the usability of mobile devices and other interactive computer systems. One approach for generating such sensations is to control the friction force between the screen and the finger-pad of the ...
Yasemin Vardar Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Shao-Wen Wu Luzia Knoedler Saekwang Nam
Both vision and touch play important roles in human perception of real surfaces. Judging material properties based on only one modality may not give reliable results. For example, many of us have had the experience th...
Yasemin Vardar
Elisa Loeffler
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
Ben Richardson
When performing minimally invasive robotic surgery, surgeons must currently rely only on their visual sense, as commercially available robotic surgery systems provide no touch feedback. Dr. Kuchenbecker and other members of the Penn Haptics Group previously inve...
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Haliza MatHusin Bernard Javot Ecda Erol
Improvements in healthcare have led to an increase in human life expectancy. Members of this aging population want to stay healthy and active, but many forms of exercise and physical therapy are expensive, boring, or inefficien...
Walking speed and symmetry are high priorities for people with hemiparesis from stroke. We developed the Gait Propulsion Trainer (GPT) to help such individuals improve their walking abilities by increasing the propulsive force generated by the paretic leg. The GPT centers on a cable spool attached to a stand at wais...
Robots working in unstructured environments and alongside people need to be able to sense contact information from both intentional and unintentional interactions. Soft and skin-like tactile sensors can provide a robot wit...
Up to 90% of individuals who undergo amputation experience a persistent sensation of the missing limb, which is called a phantom limb A substantial subset of these people feel intense pain in the missing extremity; this phantom limb pain (PLP) often responds poorly to medications or other interventions an...
Lee, Y., Husin, H. M., Forte, M. P., Lee, S., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Vision-based Force Estimation for a da Vinci Instrument Using Deep Neural Networks
Extended abstract presented as an Emerging Technology ePoster at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), Cleveland, Ohio, USA, August 2020 (misc) Accepted
Nam, S., Vardar, Y., Gueorguiev, D., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Physical Variables Underlying Tactile Stickiness during Fingerpad Detachment
Frontiers in Neuroscience, 14(235):1-14, April 2020 (article)
Burns, R. B., Lee, H., Seifi, H., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
A Fabric-Based Sensing System for Recognizing Social Touch
Work-in-progress paper (3 pages) presented at the IEEE Haptics Symposium, Washington, DC, USA, March 2020 (misc)
Vardar, Y., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Do Touch Gestures Affect How Electrovibration Feels?
Hands-on demonstration (1 page) presented at the IEEE Haptics Symposium, Washington, DC, USA, March 2020 (misc)
Richardson, B. A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Learning to Predict Perceptual Distributions of Haptic Adjectives
Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 13(116):1-16, Febuary 2020 (article)
Fitter, N. T., Mohan, M., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Johnson, M. J.
Exercising with Baxter: Preliminary Support for Assistive Social-Physical Human-Robot Interaction
Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 17(19), Febuary 2020 (article)
Forte, M. P., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Interactive Augmented Reality for Robot-Assisted Surgery
Workshop extended abstract presented as a podium presentation at the IROS Workshop on Legacy Disruptors in Applied Telerobotics, Macau, November 2019 (misc) Accepted
Serhat, G., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
High-Fidelity Multiphysics Finite Element Modeling of Finger-Surface Interactions with Tactile Feedback
Work-in-progress paper (2 pages) presented at the IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC), Tokyo, Japan, July 2019 (misc)
Gueorguiev, D., Lambert, J., Thonnard, J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Fingertip Friction Enhances Perception of Normal Force Changes
Work-in-progress paper (2 pages) presented at the IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC), Tokyo, Japan, July 2019 (misc)
Park, G., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Objective and Subjective Assessment of Algorithms for Reducing Three-Axis Vibrations to One-Axis Vibrations
In Proceedings of the IEEE World Haptics Conference, pages: 467-472, July 2019 (inproceedings)
Vardar, Y., Wallraven, C., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Fingertip Interaction Metrics Correlate with Visual and Haptic Perception of Real Surfaces
In Proceedings of the IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC), pages: 395-400, Tokyo, Japan, July 2019 (inproceedings)
Block, A. E., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Inflatable Haptic Sensor for the Torso of a Hugging Robot
Work-in-progress paper (2 pages) presented at the IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC), Tokyo, Japan, July 2019 (misc)
Forte, M. P., L’Orsa, R., Mohan, M., Nam, S., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
The Haptician and the Alphamonsters
Student Innovation Challenge on Implementing Haptics in Virtual Reality Environment presented at the IEEE World Haptics Conference, Tokyo, Japan, July 2019, Maria Paola Forte, Rachael L'Orsa, Mayumi Mohan, and Saekwang Nam contributed equally to this publication (misc)
Nam, S., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Understanding the Pull-off Force of the Human Fingerpad
Work-in-progress paper (2 pages) presented at the IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC), Tokyo, Japan, July 2019 (misc)
Young, E. M., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Implementation of a 6-DOF Parallel Continuum Manipulator for Delivering Fingertip Tactile Cues
IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 12(3):295-306, June 2019 (article)
Seifi, H., Fazlollahi, F., Oppermann, M., Sastrillo, J. A., Ip, J., Agrawal, A., Park, G., Kuchenbecker, K. J., MacLean, K. E.
Haptipedia: Accelerating Haptic Device Discovery to Support Interaction & Engineering Design
In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Glasgow, Scotland, May 2019 (inproceedings)
Lee, H., Park, K., Kim, J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Internal Array Electrodes Improve the Spatial Resolution of Soft Tactile Sensors Based on Electrical Resistance Tomography
In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages: 5411-5417, Montreal, Canada, May 2019, Hyosang Lee and Kyungseo Park contributed equally to this publication (inproceedings)
Spiers, A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Explorations of Shape-Changing Haptic Interfaces for Blind and Sighted Pedestrian Navigation
pages: 6, Workshop paper (6 pages) presented at the CHI 2019 Workshop on Hacking Blind Navigation, May 2019 (misc) Accepted
Richardson, B. A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Improving Haptic Adjective Recognition with Unsupervised Feature Learning
In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages: 3804-3810, Montreal, Canada, May 2019 (inproceedings)
Cao, E., Machaca, S., Bernard, T., Wolfinger, B., Patterson, Z., Chi, A., Adrales, G. L., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Brown, J. D.
Bimanual Wrist-Squeezing Haptic Feedback Changes Speed-Force Tradeoff in Robotic Surgery Training
Extended abstract presented as an ePoster at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), Baltimore, USA, April 2019 (misc) Accepted
Forte, M. P., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Interactive Augmented Reality for Robot-Assisted Surgery
Extended abstract presented as an Emerging Technology ePoster at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, April 2019 (misc) Accepted
Mohan, M., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
A Design Tool for Therapeutic Social-Physical Human-Robot Interactions
Workshop paper (3 pages) presented at the HRI Pioneers Workshop, Daegu, South Korea, March 2019 (misc)
Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
How Does It Feel to Clap Hands with a Robot?
International Journal of Social Robotics, 2019 (article) Accepted
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems - Highlights
2019 (mpi_year_book)
Seifi, H., Ip, J., Agrawal, A., Kuchenbecker, K. J., MacLean, K. E.
Toward Expert-Sourcing of a Haptic Device Repository
Glasgow, UK, 2019 (misc)
Park, G., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Reducing 3D Vibrations to 1D in Real Time
Hands-on demonstration (4 pages) presented at AsiaHaptics, Incheon, South Korea, November 2018 (misc)
Lee, H., Park, K., Kim, J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
A Large-Scale Fabric-Based Tactile Sensor Using Electrical Resistance Tomography
Hands-on demonstration (3 pages) presented at AsiaHaptics, Incheon, South Korea, November 2018 (misc)
Block, A. E., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Softness, Warmth, and Responsiveness Improve Robot Hugs
International Journal of Social Robotics, 11(1):49-64, October 2018 (article)
Gueorguiev, D., Tzionas, D., Pacchierotti, C., Black, M. J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Statistical Modelling of Fingertip Deformations and Contact Forces during Tactile Interaction
Extended abstract presented at the Hand, Brain and Technology conference (HBT), Ascona, Switzerland, August 2018 (misc)
Pacchierotti, C., Young, E. M., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Task-Driven PCA-Based Design Optimization of Wearable Cutaneous Devices
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 3(3):2214-2221, July 2018, Presented at ICRA 2018 (article)
Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Teaching a Robot Bimanual Hand-Clapping Games via Wrist-Worn IMUs
Frontiers in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, 5(85), July 2018 (article)
Park, G., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Reducing 3D Vibrations to 1D in Real Time
Hands-on demonstration presented at EuroHaptics, Pisa, Italy, June 2018 (misc)
Seifi, H., Fazlollahi, F., Park, G., Kuchenbecker, K. J., MacLean, K. E.
Haptipedia: Exploring Haptic Device Design Through Interactive Visualizations
Hands-on demonstration presented at EuroHaptics, Pisa, Italy, June 2018 (misc)
Young, E., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Delivering 6-DOF Fingertip Tactile Cues
Work-in-progress paper (5 pages) presented at EuroHaptics, Pisa, Italy, June 2018 (misc)
Burns, R., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Designing a Haptic Empathetic Robot Animal for Children with Autism
Workshop paper (4 pages) presented at the Robotics: Science and Systems Workshop on Robot-Mediated Autism Intervention: Hardware, Software and Curriculum, Pittsburgh, USA, June 2018 (misc)
Lee, H., Kim, J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Soft Multi-Axis Boundary-Electrode Tactile Sensors for Whole-Body Robotic Skin
Workshop paper (2 pages) presented at the RSS Pioneers Workshop, Pittsburgh, USA, June 2018 (misc)
Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Haptics and Haptic Interfaces
In Encyclopedia of Robotics, (Editors: Marcelo H. Ang and Oussama Khatib and Bruno Siciliano), Springer, May 2018 (incollection)
Oquendo, Y. A., Riddle, E. W., Hiller, D., Blinman, T. A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Automatically Rating Trainee Skill at a Pediatric Laparoscopic Suturing Task
Surgical Endoscopy, 32(4):1840-1857, April 2018 (article)
Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Arm-Worn Tactile Displays
Cross-Cutting Challenge Interactive Discussion presented at the IEEE Haptics Symposium, San Francisco, USA, March 2018 (misc)
Seifi, H., MacLean, K. E., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Park, G.
Haptipedia: An Expert-Sourced Interactive Device Visualization for Haptic Designers
Work-in-progress paper (3 pages) presented at the IEEE Haptics Symposium, San Francisco, USA, March 2018 (misc)
Fitter, N. T., Mohan, M., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Johnson, M. J.
Exercising with Baxter: Design and Evaluation of Assistive Social-Physical Human-Robot Interaction
Workshop paper (6 pages) presented at the HRI Workshop on Personal Robots for Exercising and Coaching, Chicago, USA, March 2018 (misc)
Block, A. E., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Emotionally Supporting Humans Through Robot Hugs
Workshop paper (2 pages) presented at the HRI Pioneers Workshop, Chicago, USA, March 2018 (misc)
Gueorguiev, D., Tzionas, D., Pacchierotti, C., Black, M. J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Towards a Statistical Model of Fingertip Contact Deformations from 4D Data
Work-in-progress paper (3 pages) presented at the IEEE Haptics Symposium, San Francisco, USA, March 2018 (misc)
Burka, A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Can Humans Infer Haptic Surface Properties from Images?
Work-in-progress paper (3 pages) presented at the IEEE Haptics Symposium, San Francisco, USA, March 2018 (misc)
Ambron, E., Miller, A., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Buxbaum, L. J., Coslett, H. B.
Immersive Low-Cost Virtual Reality Treatment for Phantom Limb Pain: Evidence from Two Cases
Frontiers in Neurology, 9(67):1-7, 2018 (article)
Bur, A. M., Gomez, E. D., Newman, J. G., Weinstein, G. S., Bert W. O’Malley, J., Rassekh, C. H., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Evaluation of High-Fidelity Simulation as a Training Tool in Transoral Robotic Surgery
Laryngoscope, 127(12):2790-2795, December 2017 (article)
Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Synchronicity Trumps Mischief in Rhythmic Human-Robot Social-Physical Interaction
In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR), Puerto Varas, Chile, December 2017 (inproceedings) In press
Brown, J. D., O’Brien, C. E., Leung, S. C., Dumon, K. R., Lee, D. I., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Using Contact Forces and Robot Arm Accelerations to Automatically Rate Surgeon Skill at Peg Transfer
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 64(9):2263-2275, September 2017 (article)
Ng, C., Zareinia, K., Sun, Q., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Stiffness Perception during Pinching and Dissection with Teleoperated Haptic Forceps
In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), pages: 456-463, Lisbon, Portugal, August 2017 (inproceedings)
Block, A. E., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Physical and Behavioral Factors Improve Robot Hug Quality
Workshop Paper (2 pages) presented at the RO-MAN Workshop on Social Interaction and Multimodal Expression for Socially Intelligent Robots, Lisbon, Portugal, August 2017 (misc)
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