Engineering Haptic Devices

Thorsten A. Kern received his Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degrees from Darmstadt University of Technology (TUDA), Germany in the fields of actuator and sensor development for medical human-machine-interfaces (HMIs) in applications like minimally-invasive surgery and catheterizations. He is currently a director at Hamburg University of Technology, Germany, of the Institute for Mechatronics in Mechanics. He previously worked in Automotive Industry at Continental as a R&D manager for interior components, leading a team of 300 engineers worldwide. He joined Continental in 2008 covering various functions with increasing range of responsibility in actuator development, motor-development and active haptic device development before shifting towards R&D management and product-management on Head-Up-Displays. Between 2006 and 2008 he was working in parallel in a startup focussing on medical interventions and was finalizing the 1st edition of "Engineering Haptic Devices". He joined Hamburg University in January 2019. His interests are specifically focussed on all types of electromagnetic sensors and actuators and their system-integration towards larger motor- or sensor-systems in high-dynamic applications.
Christian Hatzfeld joined the Institute of Electromechanical Design of Technische Universität Darmstadt as a research and teaching assistant in 2008 working in the group of (Measurement and Sensor Technologies) of Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil Roland Wertschützky. He received his doctoral degree in 2013 for a work about the perception of vibrotactile forces. Then he was the leader of the "Haptic Systems" group until his death in 2018. His research interests included development and design methods for task-specific haptic systems and the utilization of human perception properties to alleviate the technical design. He was the main editor of edition 2 of Engineering Haptic Devices and contributed significantly to a large number of chapters specifically focussing on psychophysical topics.
Alireza Abbasimoshaei is currently a researcher assistant at the Institute for Mechatronics in Mechanics at the Hamburg University of Technology in Germany. Before joining iMEK, he designed and built four robots and controlled them. The last one was at the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany. He filed two patents for rehabilitation devices and sold a finger rehabilitation robot he developed to a hospital partner. He also developed a new control system for rehabilitation robots in the field of control. He is an expert in mechatronic system design with special emphasis on mechanical and control system design.