2025 SES Yonggang Huang Engineering Science Medal Plenary Lecture

Mechanics and Devices for Mechanical Haptics

Unlike visual or auditory stimuli, touch commands immediate attention and instinctive reactions, making it vital for environmental interaction, safety, and emotional connection. Advances in bioelectronics have enabled wearable haptic systems, but current solutions often suffer from unimodal feedback, high energy demands, and attachment difficulties. This talk highlights recent mechanical haptic innovations from our group, spanning wearable and structured systems. We introduce curved origami-based stiffness modulation for in situ switching across positive, zero, and negative stiffness—supporting robotics and immersive haptics. We also present a wireless, bistable haptic interface based on Kresling origami, capable of delivering normal, shear, and vibrational cues by storing and releasing mechanical energy. Finally, we showcase a soft-pneumatic textile interface for full-body haptics, enabling multimodal, energy-efficient feedback for assistive and immersive applications. Together, these developments expand the frontier of haptic technologies for human-machine interaction and virtual experiences.

Bio of the speaker: Hanqing Jiang is a Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Westlake University, China. Before joining Westlake in June 2021, he was a faculty member in Mechanical Engineering at Arizona State University from 2006 to 2021. He earned his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics from Tsinghua University in 2001. His research focuses on origami- and kirigami-based mechanical metamaterials for robotics and human-machine interactions, lithium-metal batteries, and unconventional electronics. He has authored five book chapters and over 150 peer-reviewed journal papers. He was elected an ASME Fellow in 2016, a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2024, and a member of the European Academy of Sciences in 2024. He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the ASME Materials Division and was President of the Society of Engineering Science in 2022. His selected honors include an NSF CAREER Award (2009), ASME Worcester Reed Warner Medal (2021), Yonggang Huang Engineering Science Medal (2025), and ASME Daniel C. Drucker Medal (2025).