About

Yasemin Vardar

I am currently a post-doctoral researcher in the Haptic Intelligence Department of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

I will start working as an Assistant Professor in the Cognitive Robotics Department of Delft University of Technology from September 2020.

I earned my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Koç University (Istanbul, Turkey) in January of 2018. Before my Ph.D., I worked as a control engineer at TNO Additive Manufacturing Department in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. I received my M.Sc. degree in Systems and Control at the Eindhoven University of Technology in 2012, and my B.Sc degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Sabanci University (Istanbul, Turkey) in 2010.

My research focuses on designing haptic devices and applications by considering the capabilities of human haptic perception. My research goal is to build an intelligent system that enables delivering a wide variety of realistic and controllable haptic experiences on today’s electronic devices such as computers, smartphones, or tablet computers. Towards this aim, I have been trying to address the challenges in designing such a system from three aspects: perception, hardware design, and algorithm development. On the perception side, I have been investigating the nature of human touch sensation of friction on electrostatically-actuated screens. Also, I have been studying how vision and haptic cues are processed and integrated during the perception of real textures. On the hardware side, I have been working with different sensors and actuators and designing several experimental setups to deliver functional haptic feedback to the users. On the algorithm side, I have been developing data-based and model-based rendering strategies to generate realistic touch sensations on the touchscreens.

Over my career to date, I have published several journal articles and peer-reviewed archival conference papers, presented hands-on demos, and given talks at haptics workshops and conferences. I have mentored several undergraduate and graduate students and worked as a teaching assistant in undergraduate courses. I have received several awards and scholarships such as , the 2018 Eurohaptics Society Best Ph.D. Thesis Award, the IEEE World Haptics Conference 2017 Best Poster Presentation Award, and the TUBITAK Ph.D. Scholarship. Moreover, I have been serving as a reviewer in several journals including the IEEE Transactions on Haptics and the IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics. Recently, I have been selected for a prestigious career-building program for postdocs of the Max Planck Institute.

Research Interests
  • Haptics
  • Robotics
  • Mechatronics
  • Human perception

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