PhD Defense: Sarah Costrell

Congratulations to Dr. Costrell who has successfully defended her PhD Thesis!

Her dissertation presents novel soft materials-based approaches using magnetism to create compelling touch experiences, in particular, the development of soft, flexible composites made from oil-based polymers mixed with magnetic particles that behave as actuators in an external magnetic field. These materials have been integrated into wearable fingertip sheaths that produce haptic cues in response to driving magnetic forces, allowing users to feel virtual textural sensations. The culmination of this research is in a device called MAGTRACE (MAGnetic Texture Rendering for Active Contact and Exploration) that lets users actively explore various dynamically rendered macroscale virtual textures. Initial human studies showed that using only the sheaths and a single electromagnet, participants could clearly discern variations in the applied magnetic signal magnitude, enabling communication of a range of haptic sensation levels. A follow-on study with MAGTRACE showed that users could accurately identify different waveform shapes at varying sizes, validating device rendering of discernible macroscale haptic textures. These results demonstrate that this new class of soft magnetic wearables constitutes an effective device design paradigm for applications in virtual reality and teleoperation.

You can read her thesis here: Sarah Costrell PhD Thesis