FLESH FEEDBACK: Craig Douglass, Multi-Force Ergonomic Haptics

Please join us on Friday, November 15 for the fourth talk in the IDM ONX FLESH FEEDBACK lecture series, with Contact CI founder Craig Douglass.

Craig will present a framework that defines Multi-Force Ergonomic Haptics. While sharing Contact CI’s approach to developing and designing wearable haptics for spatial computing interactions over the past decade. Including live demos and a telling of the story of Maestro EP being built with a goal of enabling the hand’s sense of touch to be utilized functionally in VR applications.

Event specifics: RSVP required for non-NYU guests through Eventbrite! Every outside visitor must be registered and provide a unique non-NYU email address. On the day of the event, you'll receive an email pass, bring identification and the pass (you do not need to print it out) for security.

Speaker bio: Craig Douglass is Co-Founder of Contact CI and has been CEO of the company since 2015. Within these efforts Craig has been focused on enabling an extension of the hand's sense of touch in a way that unlocks spatial computing's highest potential as a 3-sense-immersive platform. Contact CI first began in the "Oculus awakening era" of the VR industry during the founding team's undergrad years at Syracuse University. Since then, while headquartered in Craig’s hometown of Cincinnati, Contact CI has been building Multi-Force Ergonomic Haptics for truly compellingly tangible VR, AR, and telerobotic hands-on interactions.

After first publicly debuting the VR haptic interactions of Maestro at E3 2016, Maestro EP was launched as Contact CI’s leading haptic interface for VR enterprise applications alongside a growing team at CES 2023. During his time leading the Contact CI team and growing the business, Craig has raised investment backing from prominent VR/AR industry insiders and venture capitalists, built partnerships with organizations like the USAF and Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and engaged in actively evangelizing the benefits of haptics for their real impact within applications ranging from Hard-Skills Simulation Trainings through VR gaming activities. Craig also co-founded CincinnatiVR in 2016 to help foster the local communities of VR /AR.

About the Fall ‘24-Spring '25 Speaker Series: FLESH FEEDBACK: DESIGNING WEARABLE SENSATIONS

For this year’s speaker series, we explore the intersection of haptics and wearable technology, investigating the communicative possibilities opened by our emerging intimate relations with data.

With the ubiquitous adoption and domestication of wearable devices that continually feed us streams and bursts of data relayed through touch, we’ve already become acclimated to practices of remote haptic sensing, knowing, communicating, and socializing. An emerging generation of wearables, with varying degrees of success, attempt to route more complex, engaging, and affectively compelling forms of touch through these contacts opened up between flesh and technology. At the same time, these new material intimacies with data expose us to a range of vulnerabilities, as our bodies can be monitored and remotely stimulated, often without our consent. Often ideated as our most ‘ancient’ sense–or alternatively as a ‘neglected’ sense–touch takes center stage in this year’s IDM X Onassis speaker series, as a compelling mix of artists, designers, industry professionals, and academics each take up questions about our changing embodied relationships with digital technologies.

Host or Publisher Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at NYU Tandon School of Engineering