Haptic technology is becoming a key part of the evolution of robotics, from medicine and assistive technologies to humanoid robots. But how can we enable a machine to “feel” and interact safely with people? In this interview with Humans of Technology, Inès Lacôte, a haptics researcher and co-lead of Haptivance, explores the future of haptic technology and robotics, the journey that takes European research from the laboratory to the market, and the opportunities artificial touch could unlock for a new generation of machines.
What does it really mean for a machine to “feel”?
Inès Lacôte has dedicated her career to answering this question: from a tactile GPS for people with visual impairments to haptic feedback for medical devices. In this conversation, she takes us from the physics of touch to the frontier of humanoid robotics, while also discussing her own journey as a woman in engineering and the uncomfortable realities of bringing deep tech out of European laboratories.
For someone encountering the term for the first time, how would you define haptic technology, and what does it really mean to “feel” through a machine?
The term “haptics” derives from the Greek “απτικος”, meaning “able to come into contact”, and was later popularised by the Dutch-Hungarian psychologist Géza Révesz (1878–1955). Today, it is considered the field of scientific research that studies the sense of touch and the different types of information we receive when physically interacting with the environment around us.
So, when we talk about haptics, we are referring to the sense of touch in its broadest sense. This means considering everything we perceive through touch, both actively (a smartphone screen, Braille writing, textures…) and passively (clothes against the skin, phone vibrations, temperature…). Haptics also includes all the information provided by our muscles and tendons, which gives us awareness of our position in space (proprioception), the forces exerted on us by the environment or by us on the environment (the stiffness and weight of an object, or the force required to open a door). All of this constitutes haptics, which we use every day, sometimes without even realising it.
“Feeling” through a machine is what research has developed as a way of artificially recreating haptics, most often as a means of transmitting information. Haptic technologies take many different forms, from wearable devices (gloves, vests…) to handheld devices (grips, controllers, phones…) and manipulable devices (surgical robots for teleoperation…). Haptics has applications across a wide range of fields, including surgical procedures, where tactile information from tissue can be transmitted back to a surgeon performing robotic teleoperation; physical rehabilitation following a stroke; and information tools for people with sensory impairments. In everyday life, we also use haptics as an alert mechanism (a phone vibration) or as a way of enhancing an experience (such as the sensations associated with gaming).
Which sectors or use cases are already benefiting from haptic feedback today, and where do you see the greatest disruptive potential over the next five years?
Haptic feedback is already being used across several fields. In healthcare, it is used in robotic surgery to give surgeons a degree of perception of the tissue they are manipulating remotely, and in physical rehabilitation following a stroke or injury, where force feedback helps patients relearn movements through real-time corrections. It is also a source of information for people with sensory impairments, such as loss of vision or hearing. In entertainment devices — video games, touch-screens and smartphones — haptics is becoming increasingly integrated into everyday activities.
If I had to choose where I see the greatest disruptive potential and the greatest benefits over the next five years, I would say rehabilitation and assistive technologies. We are reaching a point where haptic devices are sufficiently precise, accessible and portable to move beyond clinical environments and into people’s homes, which could completely change the way post-stroke or post-surgical recovery is monitored and supported, as well as how people with sensory impairments can enjoy greater autonomy and safety. These are the reasons why I studied haptics.
You trained as a mechanical engineer before specialising in robotics and haptics — fields in which women remain a minority. What attracted you to this area, and what was that journey like?
An encounter when I was 15 helped me discover what robotics applied to assistive technologies was. It happened when I met the engineer who created an exoskeleton that enables wheelchair users to stand up and walk. From that moment, I decided that I would become an engineer and focus on robotics for assistive technologies. I finished secondary school and enrolled in a specialised mechanical and electronic engineering programme (called CMI) at Sorbonne Université in Paris.
I discovered haptics during my Master’s degree and completed my training with an internship at the ISIR laboratory (Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique), where I worked on a haptic communication device developed by a PhD student at the time for deafblind people. Discovering haptics and understanding the broader purpose it could serve had a profound impact on me, and I decided to continue working in the field through a PhD in assistive technologies, developing a “tactile GPS” for people with sensory and/or motor impairments, followed by a postdoctoral position in haptics applied to medicine.
What would you say to a girl considering a career in engineering or robotics today, and what needs to change for more women to choose — and remain in — these fields?
First of all, I would say that it is fine to make mistakes, and that includes educational and career choices. I would add that there is almost always much more to gain from daring to take a new path than there is to lose. During my Master’s degree, I realised that I did not want to work exclusively on robotics all day. I had many doubts until I discovered haptics, which became my “research love”.
I probably would never have discovered this field of research, nor enjoyed this journey as much as I have, if I had not ventured into what is considered a male-dominated field. Supporting girls in discovering their strengths and interests should begin as early as possible, both within families and at home, setting aside stereotypes about which careers are considered “typically” male or female.
In France, scientific research institutions also run campaigns to increase the visibility of women in science; for example, the CNRS, through its national “La science taille XX elles” campaigns, which display giant portraits of female scientists alongside interviews presenting their work to the public. Afterwards, these women become ambassadors and visit schools and events to introduce both boys and girls to science, with the hope of becoming role models who can inspire them.
These kinds of initiatives to increase the visibility of women in science exist in many different formats and represent genuine recognition of their expertise and professional journeys, such as the prestigious UNESCO For Women in Science award. I believe this type of work should be much more widespread in order to reach young people as broadly as possible.
Haptivance was created to take haptics research out of the ISIR and Sorbonne Université laboratory and towards real-world products. What has been the most difficult part of that journey from the laboratory to industry?
After completing my PhD, I became interested in a haptic technology developed by a former PhD student from the laboratory, who was doing a postdoctoral position abroad at the time. At the end of his PhD, the idea emerged of taking this technology to another level: a “real-world” application outside the laboratory.
Technology transfer is becoming increasingly common in public research laboratories. Its main objective is to address social, socioeconomic and environmental needs by disseminating and creating value from public research beyond the laboratory, either by licensing technologies to industry or by creating new startups.
Haptivance addresses this objective by enriching interaction with tactile surfaces to enable safer control in constrained environments, such as an operating theatre or the dashboard of a moving car. Haptivance continues to operate within the laboratory and, for the time being, is still working to solve several scientific challenges.
I think every project has its own difficulties, but in a laboratory environment I would say that one of the most important points is not to rush headlong into “techno-push”, but to genuinely focus on “market-pull”. Having great technology is not enough: an invention only becomes an innovation when it finds its market. Identifying the market need and the specific problem to be solved is therefore the first and absolute priority when undertaking technology transfer, even though this is not necessarily a familiar exercise for people coming from a research background.
Why does Europe seem to struggle more than the United States or Asia to scale the deep tech emerging from research institutions, and what would really help solve the problem?
Europe has historical differences in the way public research is organised, funded and connected to the private sector. Both models have genuine advantages. The lower financial pressure placed on researchers in Europe probably encourages greater exploration without an immediate commercial mandate. This is genuinely rare, and it is partly what makes fundamental discovery possible. I would not want to lose that in the name of “scaling faster”.
That said, there are two things that would really help bridge the gap. First, funding: European deep tech initiatives need more patient, risk-tolerant capital between the academic grant stage and the first commercial contract. It is true that many good technologies are destined to shut down or move elsewhere before they even reach a market. As far as I know, and speaking in fairly general terms, US and Asian investors tend to be more comfortable funding a technology before its market has been fully demonstrated.
Second, European public institutions are increasingly working to become better allies and partners for this research, for example through hospitals hosting researchers and their technologies in dedicated spaces alongside hospital end users themselves. But this way of working needs to be pushed much further.
As a result, these institutions could act much more decisively as first customers for domestic deep tech than they currently do. This single change could provide startups such as Haptivance with validated, referenceable use cases years earlier, which is often exactly what unlocks private investment.
So, I would say that this is not about copying the US or Asian model. It is about protecting what makes European research distinctive while addressing what is missing or could be improved in order to build a bridge to the market.
Humanoid robots are one of the most talked-about frontiers in robotics today. Why is the sense of touch so critical for them, beyond what cameras and visual sensors can already provide?
Vision systems can tell a machine what an object is and approximately where it is, but they cannot tell it how much force to use when gripping it with its end effector (the part of the robot similar to a hand), whether a surface is slipping, or how much force can safely be applied to an object or a human body. This is what haptics provides: it creates the closed-loop information a robot needs to act and execute commands safely, rather than simply perceive its environment.
For humanoid robots — and, in fact, for a wide range of robotic devices — this matters in two ways. The first is safety: if a robot is going to work alongside people — whether welcoming visitors at a convention, collecting waste at an airport or lifting loads — it is essential for the machine to detect contact with a person or object in real time so that it can adjust its behaviour and ensure that the interaction remains smooth and safe.
Neither vision nor audio alone can do this: by the time the vision system detects that a collision has occurred, it may already be too late.
The second aspect is fine manipulation, such as picking up a plastic cup or a wine glass. Haptics also represents an enormous opportunity to improve human prosthetics, allowing people who use a robotic hand to have the smoothest and safest possible experience with their artificial hand, without crushing an egg or struggling to pick up a small object.
Haptics is a fundamental part of human perception. Thanks to it, we feel the ground beneath our feet, its slope and its stability. It protects us from serious injury, and we also use it every day for ordinary tasks, such as finding something in a bag without looking. Building complex machines based on the way we perceive our environment makes haptics an indispensable feature of reliable robotics.
Looking five to ten years into the future, what would a mature haptics ecosystem look like, and where does Haptivance want to position itself within it?
For me, a mature haptics ecosystem would be a world in which haptic feedback is as standardised and unobtrusive as a camera or microphone is today. In other words, it would be a component to integrate rather than a research problem that needs to be solved from scratch every time.
This means sharing technical standards across devices, having sensors that are small and affordable enough to be integrated everywhere — rather than being limited to high-end research platforms or highly sophisticated or specialised machines — and having production chains that make haptic actuators as accessible as any other electronic component.
I hope Haptivance becomes one of the companies that has helped bring haptics out of the laboratory and into the “real world”, starting with the constrained and safety-critical environments we know best, such as operating theatres and vehicle interiors, and building the knowledge and devices that, over time, can extend into broader robotics applications.
