A Haptics Symposium Retrospective: 20 Years

The very first "Haptics Symposium" actually went by the name "Issues in the Development of Kinesthetic Displays of Teleoperation and Virtual environments." The word "Haptic" didn't make it into the name until the next year. Not only was the most important word absent but so were RFPs, journals and commercial markets. And yet, as we prepare for the 2012 symposium, haptics is a thriving and amazingly diverse field of endeavor. In this talk we'll reflect on the origins of this field and on its evolution over the past twenty years, as well as the evolution of the Haptics Symposium itself. We hope to share with you some of the excitement we've felt along the way, and that we continue to feel as we look toward the future of our field.