KyodaiHaptics report

　Team Kyodai Haptics from Matsuno lab. won the “Best Student Innovation Challenge Award” along with a prize of $1,000 at the Student Innovation Challenge, jointly organized by the Hyundai Motor Company, Korea, and the IEEE World Haptics Conference, at Tokyo from July 9–12, 2019.
　The goal of this international competition was to propose and develop novel haptic technologies that can be used to increase the driving safety and enrich the users' experience in modern automobiles.
　The team had developed “drivee : A Haptic-Enabled Multisensory ‘Driving Assistant’ to Improve Driving Safety and Efficiency”. This plug-and-play solution exploits artificial intelligence (AI) to process various driving scenarios and provides haptic (related to the sense of touch) and audio feedbacks to the driver accordingly. The conducted evaluations show the effectiveness of the proposed solution for the improved safety and performance in driving.
　At the first stage, 8 teams were selected out of the 20 proposals from around the world. Each selected team was provided with a research grant of $1,500 from Hyundai Motor Company for the development of their prototype. In the final round, the selected teams were asked to demonstrate their work to the public at the conference venue, where a panel comprising of six experts from academia and industry evaluated the prototypes.
　As a result of the evaluation, the team (Kyodai Haptics) was given the ‘Best Student Innovation Award’ and a separate prize of $1,000 cash.
　Team Kyodai Haptics has now the honor of winning the prize at the world' s largest conference in the field of haptics.

（機械理工学専攻　博士後期課程1年　SHABANI FARHAD）