Computer Vision News - February 2023

10 Women in Computer Vision around obstacles. But touch, as soon as you reach out and touch something, you change it. You're exerting forces, so you cannot perceive it without changing it. The motions we make in the world as a human or a robot are the questions we're asking physically. The physics of our own body and of the object we touch dictate the response. It's just very complicated. But that's good for me as a researcher! There are still many things we can investigate and study. A researcher said some time ago that we had passed the point of haptics being a niche area. What do you think of that? I agree. When I started my PhD in 2002, haptics was growing, but still very small. It was captivating to me. I was an athlete, and I played volleyball at Stanford at a very high level. I also was a dancer. I am still a dancer! I've always been drawn to technology, but sense of touch, and then how to use those capabilities for manipulation and human- robot interaction. Where do you stand now? Good question! My mother is also a researcher, and she always said the conclusion to all research is: more research is needed. As researchers, we are expanding the frontier of knowledgeand learningmore things. When all is going well, that always opens up more questions. Compared to other fields, such as vision, I think we understand the sense of touch less than we understand visual feedback, the fields of graphics and computer vision, or even audio capture and processing, or audio synthesis. Touch is still at the earlier stages in terms of how well we understand it scientifically for capture and synthesis and even just fundamentally. I believe that's because touch is distributed throughout our body, and so it's actually a myriad. It's several different sensations, not just one. It's not localized, like in our eyes and our ears. It’s very, very interactive. I know vision is also active. You move your head around to get I got my PhD because I wanted to teach. I did not realize at the time how much I would love research! Alejandro Posada Axel Griesch