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Hong Z. Tan Associate Professor Purdue University Office: MSEE272 Voice: (765) 494-6416 Fax: (765) 494-6951 Email:  URL: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~hongtan/ Mailing Address: Purdue University Electrical Engineering Building 465 Northwestern Avenue West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2035 |
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Current Positions
Past Positions
Awards
Teaching
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Of the five major human senses of vision, audition, taction (touch and
proprioception), olfaction and gustation, only the first three have been
engaged in most human-machine interface research. Of these three, a
disproportional majority of work has been conducted on visual and auditory
systems. Historically, work on tactile displays have been motivated by the
desire to develop sensory-substitution systems for the visually or hearing
impaired. The importance of vision and audition is implied by the need to
replace them with other sensory modalities when they cease to function
well. The existence of a more or less intact tactual sensory system is often
taken for granted.
One way to appreciate our tactual sensory system is to consider what happens if it is impaired. Although clinical occurrences of such cases are rare (how many of us have ever met a deafferented person?), deafferented individuals suffer serious consequences from loss of peripheral organs (due to lack of protective sensory inputs) to being completely wheelchair bound. After all, the skin is the largest organ on the human body. Without its proper functions, we cannot gracefully perform even the simplest task of picking up an object. This last point is demonstrated by the fact that in the absence of any contact sensors, visually guided robotic fingers either crush or drop delicate objects such as glasses or eggs. It is time that we develop human-machine interfaces that engage our sense of touch, and build robots and objects with "touchy feelings". |
ECE511/PSY511 Psychophysics
ECE201 Linear Circuit Analysis I
ECE661 Computer Vision
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Faculty advisor,
NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program
(RGSFOP)
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Hong Z. Tan and Zygmunt Pizlo,
"Psychophysical Methods for User Interface Design and Evaluation,"
The 9th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI International 2001), New Orleans, LA, 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.,
August 7, 2001.
Hong Z. Tan, "Information Transfer: An Introduction Emphasizing
Interaction between Stimulus Dimensions," The Eighth International
Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2002), held at
Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR),
Kyoto, Japan, July2, 2002.
Hong Z. Tan and Zygmunt Pizlo, "Psychophysics for User Interface,"
The 10th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI International 2003), Crete Island, Greece, 9:00 - 13:00,
June 23, 2003.
Hong Z. Tan and Zygmunt Pizlo,
"Psychophysics for User Interface Design and Evaluation,"
The 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI International 2005), Las Vegas, Nevada, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm, July 24, 2005.
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