{"id":25734,"date":"2026-04-14T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saarland-informatics-campus.de\/?post_type=sic_news&p=25734"},"modified":"2026-04-16T11:35:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T09:35:28","slug":"two-best-paper-awards-at-the-worlds-largest-conference-on-human-computer-interaction","status":"publish","type":"sic_news","link":"https:\/\/saarland-informatics-campus.de\/en\/piece-of-news\/two-best-paper-awards-at-the-worlds-largest-conference-on-human-computer-interaction\/","title":{"rendered":"Two \u201cBest Paper Awards\u201d at the world\u2019s largest conference on human-computer interaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making virtual worlds tangible is one of the key challenges in the field of human-computer interaction. While vision and hearing are already well integrated into virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), the sense of touch still lags behind. The Sensorimotor Interaction group, led by Dr. Paul Strohmeier at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Informatics, is researching how to change this. Two papers written by the group in collaboration with Saarland University and international partners will now each receive a Best Paper Award at the world\u2019s largest conference in the field of human-computer interaction.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This honor is granted to only about 3.6% of the more than 1,700 papers accepted at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The conference takesplace in Barcelona from April 13 to 17, 2026.<\/p>\n

The first award-winning paper is \u201cScene2Hap: Generating Scene-Wide Haptics for VR from Scene Context with Multimodal LLMs.\u201d Paul Strohmeeier explains: \u201cIn virtual reality, we are used to seeing or hearing content. Virtual worlds you can feel by touch are much rarer. While visual content is created through light and acoustic content through sound waves, our approach is based on vibration. Building on simple effects like those one might recognize from VR controllers or smartphones, we recreate the complex dynamics of the tactile world this way.” However, the vibration patterns required to create such haptic impressions (vibrotactile feedback) currently still have to be created manually, which does not scale for complex VR scenes with many objects. That is the focus of the newly awarded paper.<\/p>\n

With \u201cScene2Hap,\u201d first authors Arata Jingu from Professor J\u00fcrgen Steimle\u2019s Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Saarland University and Easa AliAbbasi from Paul Strohmeier\u2019s Sensorimotor Interaction group have now developed an approach for automatically designing meaningful vibrotactile feedback for objects and scenes in virtual reality. To do this, the researchers use a multimodal large language model (LLM) that can process not only language, but also image and audio data. The model automatically infers the semantics of objects, physical properties and material characteristics, as well as the physical context of the scene. \u201cWe draw on various layers of meta-information, ranging from the context of a virtual object to material properties that the LLM can recognize in the image,\u201d explains Easa AliAbbasi. The vibrotactile feedback is then generated and transmitted separately to each hand via the VR controllers being held. In three different user studies, the team was able to show that \u201cScene2Hap\u201d successfully improved users\u2019 sense of space and perception of materials and generally contributed to a better user experience when the VR environment was created entirely with the newly developed pipeline.<\/p>\n

The second award-winning paper, \u201cHow are Vibrotactile Experiences Visually Represented? A Taxonomy of Illustration Characteristics,\u201d is a meta-study that examines how haptic impressions and tactile information are communicated in research. More specifically, the award-winning paper investigates how vibrotactile feedback is represented visually. \u201cWhen new methods for visual rendering are developed, their quality can be shown directly in papers, for example through an image. In haptics research, things are different: we can only describe what something feels like, but we cannot easily convey the actual sensation directly. In my opinion, this limited ability to represent haptic experiences is a central challenge in haptics research,\u201d says Paul Strohmeier.<\/p>\n

To analyze this issue, the researchers first developed\u00a0a taxonomy for representing vibrotactile experiences (VTX) and then collected a total of 1,652 papers from the past 25 years from the digital libraries of the two world\u2019s largest professional associations in computing, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Within these, they identified 768 visual representations from 409 research papers and coded them according to their visual representation of VTX based on the taxonomy. Their results indicate that (1) half of the illustrations communicate on the timing of vibrotactile feedback with regards to users\u2019 actions, (2) illustrations depict stimuli rather than experiences and infrequently communicate multimodal aspects of the experiences, and (3) contextual information of vibrotactile displays and experiential aspects are often distributed across several complementary figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith our taxonomy, we want to give authors a tool to analyze and improve their illustrations. At the same time, in combination with the corresponding dataset it could serve as an approach for generative models to automatically create ideas or inspiration for visualizing one\u2019s own research,\u201d explains Dennis Wittchen from the SensInt group, who co-authored the paper as first author together with Bruno Fruchard from the French research institute Inria.<\/p>\n

Orignal publications:<\/strong><\/span>
\nArata Jingu, Easa AliAbbasi, Sara Safaee, Paul Strohmeier, and Ju\u0308rgen Steimle. 2026. Scene2Hap: Generating Scene-Wide Haptics for VR from Scene Context with Multimodal LLMs. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI \u201926), April 13\u201317, 2026, Barcelona, Spain<\/i>. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 21 pages. https:\/\/doi.org\/10<\/u><\/span><\/a>.1145\/3772318.3791297<\/p>\n

Bruno Fruchard, Dennis Wittchen, Nihar Sabnis, Paul Strohmeier, and Donald Degraen. 2026. How are Vibrotactile Experiences Visually Represented? A Taxonomy of Illustration Characteristics. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI \u201926), April 13\u201317, 2026, Barcelona, Spain<\/i>. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 24 pages.
\ndoi.org\/10.1145\/3772318.3790598<\/a><\/p>\n

Further information:<\/strong>
\nWebsite of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: https:\/\/chi2026.acm.org\/<\/a>
\nWebsite of the Sensorimotor<\/span> Interaction group: https:\/\/sensint.mpi-inf.mpg.de\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor:<\/strong>
\nPhilipp Zapf-Schramm
\nMax Planck Institute for Informatics
\nPhone: +49 681 9325 4509
\nEmail: pzs@mpi-inf.mpg.de<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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