The workshop will be held in Naples on May 31, 2008 following the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces.
Recent advances in haptic technology have been urging IT researchers to investigate innovative multimodal interfaces and interaction paradigms, able to exploit the increased technological power and to convey its novel features towards different application domains.These especially pertain to industrial, medical, and biotechnological domains. The common key goal is to reproduce in the best possible way a real “physical” manipulation even when the latter is not possible due to logistical problems (e.g. remote operation) or to dangerous settings (e.g. radioactive materials and areas), or when it is convenient to just simulate a real operation (e.g. for training purposes).

A more “natural” and familiar way of managing objects and situations is also expected to improve global user performances and increase applications effectiveness. A further possibility is to extend present interaction metaphors to include new ways to manage also “abstract” objects. In the industrial world, the goal of improving competitiveness has led to the experimentation of haptic interfaces in fields like automotive and aerospace engineering, and textual manufacturing. In the medical domain, education and research activities are being increasingly improved by the adoption of haptic environments for virtual surgery simulation. Several new challenges are arising in the field of biology/biotechnology, where the adoption of visual interfaces connected to haptic devices is recognized as a powerful and straightforward mean to handle nano-objects, such as cells, and the possibility of force feedback offered by certain haptic systems, is envisioned as a considerable improvement of operator’s perception.

Last but not least, several multimodal interfaces enhanced with haptic feedback have been conceived to address major societal needs, e.g., by visually impaired people or wheelchair users.