New book on Haptics has been released!
/I'm happily announce that my latest book is now out. The name of the book is "Haptics 101" in English. If I would do direct translation, ”Enjoy touching and feeling like listening music" in Japanese.
It takes four years to complete this book project, since it is difficult work to depict tactile feelings and haptic sensation in language. As I stated in my research statement, touch is the least understood modality in five sense so that there are only a few references that can capture what I want to convey in current haptics study.
This book starts by referencing Linus, a boy and one of main characters in Peanuts, the American cartoon. Linus always has a blue blanket and he is strong when he is holding the blanket. This phenomenon is known as "Safety Blanket" (or known comfort object, see wikipedia) children psychology and familiar phenomenon observers once you have kids. One columbia PhD student had also wrote a dissertation about this topic (If Linus' blanket were Lucy's too: Sex differences in transitional object use, in 1995). Safety blanket is one of compelling example of the importance in haptic sensation for having confidence and better cognitive performance. I like this phenomenon when I try to convince people how important the sense of touch is in daily life.
The book is currently written in Japan but will be translated into English and published by 2017. If you can read Japanese, it is worth reading book, I'm confident (of course, I'm also holding a blanket now!).