Eurohaptics 2026 | Standardization Workshop

Bridging the Fragmentation Gap

Despite significant advances in rendering and device design, large-scale deployment remains limited by a lack of interoperability. Currently, haptic research often exists in "silos," with content trapped within specific hardware or proprietary pipelines.

This workshop is the core forum at Eurohaptics 2026 for academic, industrial, and national stakeholders to align. We provide the first direct link between Eurohaptics researchers and the architects of MPEG and IEEE standards, ensuring your research contributions effectively support the interoperable systems of tomorrow.

AcademiaConnect research to global deployment pipelines.
IndustryScale products across diverse haptic ecosystems.
National BodiesAdopt secure, standardized communication frameworks.

Half-Day Program Schedule

Experience a deep dive into the future of haptic technology.

14:00 - 14:15

Welcome & introduction

Goals, scope, logistics.

14:15 - 15:15

Technical Standards Session

Two-part overview of recent haptics standards (MPEG and IEEE Introductions).

15:15 - 15:30

Teaser: Poster / Demo

1-minute Elevator Pitch.

15:30 - 16:00

Coffee break

(conference schedule).

15:30 - 16:30

Posters and Demos

Interactive presentations of systems, tools, and research contributions.

16:30 - 17:30

Industrial Perspectives with Panel Discussion

Deployment experiences and integration challenges with discussion on Standardization and Future of Haptics Ecosystems.

17:30 - 18:00

Wrap-up

Synthesis and next steps.

Eurohaptics2026 Conference Registration

Live Demonstration Highlights

Experience standard-aligned interactions in person.

Conductivity-based Thermal Feedback

Traditional VR thermal feedback is static and immersion-breaking. This demo showcases an entropy-driven conductivity model aligned with descriptive standards. Experience realistic, material-specific thermal signatures (Glass, Metal, Wood) that respond dynamically to user interaction.

360 Spatial Haptic Interaction

Dense immersive environments often lead to "haptic noise." This demo showcases MPEG-I prioritization techniques, which ensure that in a complex 360° environment, only the most relevant haptic feedback reaches the user, enhancing spatial clarity and interaction meaningfulness.

Texture Exploration with Vibrotactile Feedback

The demonstration involves a surface texture exploration task in a virtual environment with realistic vibrotactile feedback. The architecture adopts the VC-PWQ codec for waveform-based vibrotactile signals. The setup showcases how different levels of compression affect signal fidelity and subjective quality of tactile experience.

Pick and Place Task with Haptic Feedback

The TOAST testbed will show the capabilities of the IEEE 1918.1.1 standard through a pick-and-place task in a virtual environment, with control over simulated delay, amount of compression, and the application of the Time Domain Passivity Approach (TDPA).

MPEG Haptics Streaming Player

This demo presents a lightweight MPEG haptics streaming player that packages haptic effects together with conventional audio-video content into a DASH-compatible experience, then plays them back in sync through a simple cross-platform interface. It leverages several haptics-related MPEG specifications, including ISO/IEC 23090 Parts 31, 32, 33, and 37, to illustrate how standardized haptic representations, metadata, and streaming mechanisms can be integrated into practical media workflows from content preparation and packaging to interoperable playback. The demo is intended to highlight the value of standards-based, open tooling for making immersive haptic media easier to evaluate, deploy, and adopt across both research and industry contexts.

Overview of the ISO/IEC 23090-31 and IEEE 1918.1.1-2024 Standards

Core technical foundations for the next generation of haptic exchange.

The two haptic codec standards are both designed to enable the exchange of haptic data, but with differing focus and capabilities: The ISO/IEC 23090-31 standard provides both descriptive and waveform based coding approaches for multi-modal haptic feedback. It facilitates the incorporation of haptics into the ISOBMFF, MPEG-DASH, and MPEG-I standards, making it easier for content creators as well as media/streaming content providers to incorporate haptics in a standardized manner and improve the overall user experience. The waveform-based approach is designed to perceptually encode vibrotactile signals, while the descriptive approach allows the coding of other haptic modalities as well, first and foremost kinesthetic and vibrotactile data. A human readable JSON format (.hjif) is used as an exchange format. This format can be compressed into a binary file format for distribution (.hmpg) or into a packetized bitstream for streaming purposes.

The IEEE 1918.1.1-2024 standard provides haptic codecs for the Tactile Internet enabling the interoperability of different haptic (kinesthetic and tactile) input and output devices. Such interoperability is necessary to achieve necessary market scale in the realization of Tactile Internet (TI) technologies, devices and applications. These codecs address TI application scenarios where the human is in the loop (i.e. teleoperation or remote touch applications) as well as scenarios that rely on machine remote control. The standard defines (perceptual) data reduction algorithms and schemes for both closed-loop (kinesthetic information exchange) and open-loop (tactile information exchange) communication. These codecs can be combined with stabilizing control and local communication architectures for time-delayed teleoperation. The standard also specifies mechanisms and protocols for the exchange of the capabilities (e.g. workspace, the number of degrees of freedom, amplitude range, temporal and spatial resolution, etc.) of the haptic devices.

More information on MPEG-I More Information on IEEE 1918.1.1

From Research to Deployment