Katherine J. Kuchenbecker directs the Haptic Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. She was previously an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she held the Class of 1940 Bicentennial Endowed Term Chair and a secondary appointment in Computer and Information Science. Kuchenbecker earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 2006 and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research centers on haptic interfaces, which enable a user to touch virtual and distant objects as though they were real and within reach, as well as haptic sensing systems, which allow robots to physically interact with objects and people.
Kuchenbecker delivered a TEDYouth talk on haptics in 2012, and she has received several honors including a 2009 NSF CAREER Award, the 2012 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Academic Early Career Award, and a 2014 Penn Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. Her team has won various best paper and best demonstration awards, and she frequently gives keynote talks at conferences. She was co-chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics from 2014 to 2017, and she co-chaired the IEEE Haptics Symposium in 2016 and 2018.
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Although a human can move his or her fingertip with six degrees of freedom (three for position and three for orientation), displaying 6DOF haptic cues continues to escape the capabilities of body-grounded fingertip haptic displays. All six degrees of freedom have been displayed in smaller subsets, so the l...
The lack of haptic feedback is a potential limitation of existing robotic surgical systems. Members of Dr. Kuchenbecker's group at Penn previously invented a haptic feedback system named VerroTouch that is able to deliver the vibrations of s...
Robotic minimally invasive surgery systems such as the Intuitive Surgical da Vinci system physically separate the surgeon from the surgical tools. As touch cues are known to play a critical role in manipulation tasks, the resulting loss of the sense of touch may affect the speed and ski...
Humans draw on their vast life experience of touching things to make inferences about the objects in their environment; this capability enables one to make haptic judgments before actually touching things. For example, it is effortless to select the correct grip force for picking up a delicate object, or to choose a g...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex condition that impacts many systems in the body, from neurological aspects to physical comorbidities. Children with autism often endu...
Creating haptic experiences often entails inventing, modifying, or selecting specialized hardware. However, experience designers are rarely engineers, and 30 years of haptic inventions are buried in the fragmented literature that describes devices mechanically rather...
Hasti Seifi Farimah Fazlollahi Gunhyuk Park Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
Many modern humanoid robots are designed to operate in human environments, like homes and hospitals. If designed well, such robots could help humans accomplish tasks and lower their physical and/or mental workload. As opposed to having an operator devise control policies and reprogram the robot for every new situation...
Hugs are one of the first forms of contact and affection that humans experience. Not only are hug...
Our first HuggieBot research project showed that people are generally accepting of soft, warm robot hugs...
Human soft-tissue properties vary widely: factors such as the patient's age and health can make enormous differences. As a result, junior medical professionals often have difficulty learning how much force is needed to cut through or puncture a particular type of tissue.
For example, during chest tube insertion, the do...
Being able to cover the entire body of a robot with soft tactile sensors has become an attractive concept in intelligent robotics. Soft, stretchable materials can conform around surfaces and also absorb impacts, which is benefi...
Humans can form an impression of how a new object feels simply by touching its surfaces with the densely innervated skin of the fingertips. Recent research has focused on endowing robots with similar levels of haptic intelligence, but these efforts are usually limited to specifi...
Little is known about the shape and properties of the human finger during haptic interaction, as such situations are difficult to instrument. Interestingly, th...
David Gueorguiev
Dimitrios Tzionas
Michael Black
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
The demand for natural haptic feedback on touch screens such as smartphones and car control panels has been rapidly...
Many scenarios arise wherein the high-frequency accelerations of a tool need to be captured and either portrayed for a human to feel or analyzed by a computer system. For example, this approach provides a simple and realistic way for a surgeon to feel tactile information from a remotely controlled surgical robot. Sim...
Out of the many technologies being applied to healthcare delivery today, augmented reality (AR) is one of the most exciting. We believe AR can be applied to surgical robots to provide surgeo...
The frictional forces we experience when our body interacts with objects provide essential sensory cues that help adapt our behavior. We rely on these sensory cues daily, for example when we feel the smoothness of...
Many situations arise where it is beneficial for a human to control the movements of a robot at a distance, such as handling hazardous materials, doing surgery deep inside the human body, or taking part in remote meetings with other people. In these scenarios, the...
DJing is a musical activity that involves the blending of songs (mixing) and the rythmic manipulation of sounds (scratching). Traditionally, DJs used vinyl records as their music sources. The vibration of a stylus (needle) in the groove of these records produced not just sound, but also subtle haptic sensations that could be fe...
The interaction between a human finger-pad and a physical surface generates not only the tangential friction needed for gripping objects but also a wide variety of perceptual experiences. Finger-surface contact behavior is known to depend on the ...
Saekwang Nam
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
David Gueorguiev
Yasemin Vardar
Researchers worldwide want to discover how to generate compelling tactile sensations on touchscreens to increase the usability of mobile devices and other interactive computer systems. One approach for generating such sensations is to control the friction force between the screen and the finger-pad of the ...
Yasemin Vardar Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Shao-Wen Wu Saekwang Nam
Both vision and touch play important roles in human perception of real surfaces. Judging material properties based on only one modality may not give reliable results. For example, many of us have had the experience th...
When performing minimally invasive robotic surgery, surgeons must currently rely only on their visual sense, as commercially available robotic surgery systems provide no touch feedback. Dr. Kuchenbecker and other members of the Penn Haptics Group previously inve...
Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Haliza MatHusin Bernard Javot Ecda Erol
Improvements in healthcare have led to an increase in human life expectancy. Members of this aging population want to stay healthy and active, but many forms of exercise and physical therapy are expensive, boring, or inefficien...
Walking speed and symmetry are high priorities for people with hemiparesis from stroke. We developed the Gait Propulsion Trainer (GPT) to help such individuals improve their walking abilities by increasing the propulsive force generated by the paretic leg. The GPT centers on a cable spool attached to a stand at wais...
Robots working in unstructured environments and alongside people need to be able to sense contact information from both intentional and unintentional interactions. Soft and skin-like tactile sensors can provide a robot wit...
Up to 90% of individuals who undergo amputation experience a persistent sensation of the missing limb, which is called a phantom limb A substantial subset of these people feel intense pain in the missing extremity; this phantom limb pain (PLP) often responds poorly to medications or other interventions an...
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Culbertson, H., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Importance of Matching Physical Friction, Hardness, and Texture in Creating Realistic Haptic Virtual Surfaces
IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 10(1):63-74, January 2017 (article)
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Khurshid, R. P., Fitter, N. T., Fedalei, E. A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Effects of Grip-Force, Contact, and Acceleration Feedback on a Teleoperated Pick-and-Place Task
IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 10(1):40-53, January 2017 (article)
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Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Qualitative User Reactions to a Hand-Clapping Humanoid Robot
In Social Robotics: 8th International Conference, ICSR 2016, Kansas City, MO, USA, November 1-3, 2016 Proceedings, 9979, pages: 317-327, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer International Publishing, November 2016, Oral presentation given by Fitter (inproceedings)
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Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Designing and Assessing Expressive Open-Source Faces for the Baxter Robot
In Social Robotics: 8th International Conference, ICSR 2016, Kansas City, MO, USA, November 1-3, 2016 Proceedings, 9979, pages: 340-350, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer International Publishing, November 2016, Oral presentation given by Fitter (inproceedings)
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Fitter, N. T., Hawkes, D. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Rhythmic Timing in Playful Human-Robot Social Motor Coordination
In Social Robotics: 8th International Conference, ICSR 2016, Kansas City, MO, USA, November 1-3, 2016 Proceedings, 9979, pages: 296-305, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer International Publishing, November 2016, Oral presentation given by Fitter (inproceedings)
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Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Using IMU Data to Demonstrate Hand-Clapping Games to a Robot
In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages: 851 - 856, October 2016, Interactive presentation given by Fitter (inproceedings)
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Burka, A., Hu, S., Helgeson, S., Krishnan, S., Gao, Y., Hendricks, L. A., Darrell, T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
ProtonPack: A Visuo-Haptic Data Acquisition System for Robotic Learning of Surface Properties
In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems (MFI), pages: 58-65, 2016, Oral presentation given by Burka (inproceedings)
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Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Equipping the Baxter Robot with Human-Inspired Hand-Clapping Skills
In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), pages: 105-112, 2016 (inproceedings)
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Hu, S., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Reproducing a Laser Pointer Dot on a Secondary Projected Screen
In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), pages: 1645-1650, 2016, Oral presentation given by Hu (inproceedings)
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Fjeld, K., Hu, S., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Vasudevan, E. V.
Design and evaluation of a novel mechanical device to improve hemiparetic gait: a case report
Extended abstract presented at the Biomechanics and Neural Control of Movement Conference (BANCOM), 2016, Poster presentation given by Fjeld (misc)
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Gao, Y., Hendricks, L. A., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Darrell, T.
Deep Learning for Tactile Understanding From Visual and Haptic Data
In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 536-543, May 2016, Oral presentation given by Gao (inproceedings)
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Hui, J. C. T., Block, A. E., Taylor, C. J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Robust Tactile Perception of Artificial Tumors Using Pairwise Comparisons of Sensor Array Readings
In Proceedings of the IEEE Haptics Symposium, pages: 305-312, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, April 2016, Oral presentation given by Hui (inproceedings)
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Brown, J. D., Ibrahim, M., Chase, E. D. Z., Pacchierotti, C., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Data-Driven Comparison of Four Cutaneous Displays for Pinching Palpation in Robotic Surgery
In Proceedings of the IEEE Haptics Symposium, pages: 147-154, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, April 2016, Oral presentation given by Brown (inproceedings)
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Burka, A., Hu, S., Helgeson, S., Krishnan, S., Gao, Y., Hendricks, L. A., Darrell, T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Design and Implementation of a Visuo-Haptic Data Acquisition System for Robotic Learning of Surface Properties
In Proceedings of the IEEE Haptics Symposium, pages: 350-352, April 2016, Work-in-progress paper. Poster presentation given by Burka (inproceedings)
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Gomez, E. D., Aggarwal, R., McMahan, W., Bark, K., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Objective assessment of robotic surgical skill using instrument contact vibrations
Surgical Endoscopy, 30(4):1419-1431, 2016 (article)
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Brown, J. D., Ibrahim, M., Chase, E. D. Z., Pacchierotti, C., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
One Sensor, Three Displays: A Comparison of Tactile Rendering from a BioTac Sensor
Hands-on demonstration presented at IEEE Haptics Symposium, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, April 2016 (misc)
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Pacchierotti, C., Prattichizzo, D., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Cutaneous Feedback of Fingertip Deformation and Vibration for Palpation in Robotic Surgery
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 63(2):278-287, February 2016 (article)
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Fitter, N. T., Hawkes, D. T., Johnson, M. J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Designing Human-Robot Exercise Games for Baxter
2016, Late-breaking results report presented at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (misc)
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Fitter, N. T., Huang, Y. E., Mayer, J. P., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
IMU-Mediated Real-Time Human-Baxter Hand-Clapping Interaction
2016, Late-breaking results report presented at the {\em IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems} (misc)
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Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Reducing Student Anonymity and Increasing Engagement
University of Pennsylvania Almanac, 62(18):8, November 2015 (article)
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Koehn, J. K., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Surgeons and Non-Surgeons Prefer Haptic Feedback of Instrument Vibrations During Robotic Surgery
Surgical Endoscopy, 29(10):2970-2983, October 2015 (article)
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Pacchierotti, C., Prattichizzo, D., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Displaying Sensed Tactile Cues with a Fingertip Haptic Device
IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 8(4):384-396, October 2015 (article)
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Burka, A., Hu, S., Krishnan, S., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Hendricks, L. A., Gao, Y., Darrell, T.
Toward a large-scale visuo-haptic dataset for robotic learning
In Proc. CVPR Workshop on the Future of Datasets in Vision, 2015 (inproceedings)
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Hui, J., Block, A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Detecting Lumps in Simulated Tissue via Palpation with a BioTac
In Proc. IEEE World Haptics Conference, 2015, Work-in-progress paper. Poster presentation given by Hui (inproceedings)
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Brown, J. D., O’Brien, C., Miyasaka, K., Dumon, K. R., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Analysis of the Instrument Vibrations and Contact Forces Caused by an Expert Robotic Surgeon Doing FRS Tasks
In Proc. Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics, pages: 75-76, London, England, June 2015, Poster presentation given by Brown (inproceedings)
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Culbertson, H., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Should Haptic Texture Vibrations Respond to User Force and Speed?
In IEEE World Haptics Conference, pages: 106 - 112, Evanston, Illinois, USA, June 2015, Oral presentation given by Culbertson (inproceedings)
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Fitter, N. T., Neuburger, M., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Enabling the Baxter Robot to Play Hand-Clapping Games
In Proc. IEEE World Haptics Conference, June 2015, Work-in-progress paper. Poster presentation given by Fitter (inproceedings)
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Khurshid, R. P., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Data-Driven Motion Mappings Improve Transparency in Teleoperation
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 24(2):132-154, May 2015 (article)
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Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Using IMU Data to Teach a Robot Hand-Clapping Games
In Proc. IEEE Haptics Symposium, pages: 353-355, April 2015, Work-in-progress paper. Poster presentation given by Fitter (inproceedings)
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Bur, A. M., Gomez, E. D., Rassekh, C. H., Newman, J. G., Weinstein, G. S., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Haptic Feedback in Transoral Robotic Surgery: A Feasibility Study
In Proc. Annual Meeting of the Triological Society at COSM, April 2015, Poster presentation given by Bur (inproceedings)
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Culbertson, H., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Haptic Textures for Online Shopping
Interactive demonstrations in The Retail Collective exhibit, presented at the Dx3 Conference in Toronto, Canada, March 2015 (misc)
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Bur, A. M., Gomez, E. D., Chalian, A. A., Newman, J. G., Weinstein, G. S., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Design and Validation of a Practical Simulator for Transoral Robotic Surgery
In Proc. Society for Robotic Surgery Annual Meeting: Transoral Program, (T8), February 2015, Oral presentation given by Bur (inproceedings)
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Chu, V., McMahon, I., Riano, L., McDonald, C. G., He, Q., Perez-Tejada, J. M., Arrigo, M., Darrell, T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Robotic Learning of Haptic Adjectives Through Physical Interaction
Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 63(3):279-292, January 2015, Corrigendum published in June 2016 (article)
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Bark, K., Hyman, E., Tan, F., Cha, E., Jax, S. A., Buxbaum, L. J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Effects of Vibrotactile Feedback on Human Motor Learning of Arbitrary Arm Motions
IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 23(1):51-63, January 2015 (article)
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Kurihara, Y., Takei, S., Nakai, Y., Hachisu, T., Kuchenbecker, K. J., Kajimoto, H.
Haptic Robotization of Human Body via Data-Driven Vibrotactile Feedback
Entertainment Computing, 5(4):485-494, December 2014 (article)
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Leung, S., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Automatic Skill Evaluation for a Needle Passing Task in Robotic Surgery
In Proc. IROS Workshop on the Role of Human Sensorimotor Control in Robotic Surgery, Chicago, Illinois, sep 2014, Poster presentation given by Kuchenbecker. Best Poster Award (inproceedings)
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Culbertson, H., Unwin, J., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Modeling and Rendering Realistic Textures from Unconstrained Tool-Surface Interactions
IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 7(3):381-292, July 2014 (article)
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Pacchierotti, C., Prattichizzo, D., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
A Data-driven Approach to Remote Tactile Interaction: From a BioTac Sensor to Any Fingertip Cutaneous Device
In Haptics: Neuroscience, Devices, Modeling, and Applications, Proc. EuroHaptics, Part I, 8618, pages: 418-424, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, June 2014, Poster presentation given by Pacchierotti in Versailles, France (inproceedings)
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Hui, J. C. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Evaluating the BioTac’s Ability to Detect and Characterize Lumps in Simulated Tissue
In Haptics: Neuroscience, Devices, Modeling, and Applications, Proc. EuroHaptics, Part II, 8619, pages: 295-302, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, June 2014, Poster presentation given by Hui in Versailles, France (inproceedings)
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Wong, D., Dames, P., J. Kuchenbecker, K.
Teaching Forward and Inverse Kinematics of Robotic Manipulators Via MATLAB
June 2014, Presented at {\em ICRA Workshop on {MATLAB/Simulink} for Robotics Education and Research}. Oral presentation given by {Dames} and {Wong} (misc)
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Fitter, N. T., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Analyzing Human High-Fives to Create an Effective High-Fiving Robot
In Proc. ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pages: 156-157, Bielefeld, Germany, March 2014, Poster presentation given by Fitter (inproceedings)
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McMahan, W., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Dynamic Modeling and Control of Voice-Coil Actuators for High-Fidelity Display of Haptic Vibrations
In Proc. IEEE Haptics Symposium, pages: 115-122, Houston, Texas, USA, February 2014, Oral presentation given by Kuchenbecker (inproceedings)
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Pierce, R. M., Fedalei, E. A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
A Wearable Device for Controlling a Robot Gripper With Fingertip Contact, Pressure, Vibrotactile, and Grip Force Feedback
In Proc. IEEE Haptics Symposium, pages: 19-25, Houston, Texas, USA, February 2014, Oral presentation given by Pierce (inproceedings)
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Romano, J. M., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Methods for Robotic Tool-Mediated Haptic Surface Recognition
In Proc. IEEE Haptics Symposium, pages: 49-56, Houston, Texas, USA, February 2014, Oral presentation given by Kuchenbecker. Finalist for Best Paper Award (inproceedings)
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Pierce, R. M., Fedalei, E. A., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Control of a Virtual Robot with Fingertip Contact, Pressure, Vibrotactile, and Grip Force Feedback
Hands-on demonstration presented at IEEE Haptics Symposium, Houston, Texas, USA, February 2014 (misc)
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Culbertson, H., Delgado, J. J. L., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
One Hundred Data-Driven Haptic Texture Models and Open-Source Methods for Rendering on 3D Objects
In Proc. IEEE Haptics Symposium, pages: 319-325, Houston, Texas, USA, February 2014, Poster presentation given by Culbertson. Finalist for Best Poster Award (inproceedings)
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Kuchenbecker, K. J., Anon, A. M., Barkin, T., deVillafranca, K., Lo, M.
A Modular Tactile Motion Guidance System
Hands-on demonstration presented at IEEE Haptics Symposium, Houston, Texas, USA, February 2014 (misc)
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Culbertson, H., Delgado, J. J. L., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
The Penn Haptic Texture Toolkit
Hands-on demonstration presented at IEEE Haptics Symposium, Houston, Texas, USA, February 2014 (misc)
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Pacchierotti, C., Shirsat, P., Koehn, J. K., Prattichizzo, D., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
Cutaneous Feedback of Planar Fingertip Deformation and Vibration on a da Vinci Surgical Robot
In Proc. IROS Workshop on the Role of Human Sensorimotor Control in Robotic Surgery, Chicago, Illinois, 2014, Poster presentation given by Koehn (inproceedings)
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McMahan, W., Gomez, E. D., Chen, L., Bark, K., Nappo, J. C., Koch, E. I., Lee, D. I., Dumon, K., Williams, N., Kuchenbecker, K. J.
A Practical System For Recording Instrument Interactions During Live Robotic Surgery
Journal of Robotic Surgery, 7(4):351-358, 2013 (article)
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