Focus Areas
The transdisciplinary team at HFI envisions potential applications for our technologies across a broad range of focus areas, including healthcare, education, gaming, military, and a growing list of other human experiences in which we are expanding the limits of human
ability and awareness.
Medical
Investigating and developing technologies to improve the quality of life by enhancing mobility and restoring sensory functions such as vision, hearing, and touch for individuals with disabilities
Military
Enabling active service members to function and perceive at a safe distance from inhospitable conditions, and empowering veterans with technology to improve mobility and mental health
Industrial
Creating technology that allows tasks to be completed in dangerous conditions and distant locations while providing the human with remote control and sensory feedback
Wearables
Allowing full immersion in virtual worlds through wearable neurosensory connection technologies, with applications in gaming, health monitoring, emotional support, and more
Implantables
Developing advanced wearable and implanted interfaces allowing direct communication between a person’s nervous system and technologies that can be controlled by thought and deliver sensory feedback
Commercial
Producing a range of commercially viable applications, including gaming, spatial computing, social connection, education, the creative arts, and entertainment
Mental Health and Social Touch
Improving mental health and well-being for physically isolated individuals through technologies that support social-physical interaction and facilitate remote social touch
Edutainment
Exploring new ways for humans to interact with computers and machines, including virtual reality environments and augmented reality
applications
Remote Healthcare
Providing new technologies to advance telehealth beyond a flat screen to enable remote physical interaction between caregiver and patient, facilitating care at a distance in remote or hazardous environments
Prosthetics
Advancing prosthetic technology by restoring not only mobility, but the sense of touch for people missing upper or lower body
extremities
Robotics
Creating sophisticated robotic prosthetics and other devices that replicate natural limb function, restore tactile sensation, offer mobility, and a wide range of other applications