Obituary: Vincent Hayward (1955–2023)

On May 10th, 2023, the world lost a remarkable scientist and polymath, Vincent Hayward (1955–2023). His departure leaves a void in the scientific community, and we will deeply miss his intellectual brilliance, eclectic personality, profound humility, and legendary laughter.

Vincent was a haptician, captivated by our ability to perceive the world through the sense of touch. His research was a unique blend of engineering, psychology, psychophysics, neuroscience, and philosophy, focused in large part on the perceptual skin and human behavior.

Vincent's academic journey began as an undergraduate at Ecole Centrale of Nantes in France, where he earned his engineering degree in 1978. Subsequently, he pursued his PhD at LIMSI (“Laboratoire d'informatique pour la mécanique et les sciences de l'ingénieur” in Orsay, France) in 1981, focusing on real-time optimization computer programs for robotics control. Afterward, he secured two positions at Purdue University in the United States, first as a Postdoctoral Fellow and later as a Visiting Assistant Professor (1981–1983), collaborating with Professor Richard P. Paul on developing the first control library for advanced industrial robots and exploring force feedback integration. In 1983, he returned to France as a Research Officer (Chargé de Recherches) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, working on trajectory planning and spatial reasoning.

In 1987, Vincent joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University in Canada as an assistant, associate (1994), and then full professor (2006). From 2001 to 2004, he served as the Director of the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines. During his early years at McGill, his research centered on robot programming and control, 3-D imaging, computational geometry, spatial reasoning, computational architectures, and space and remote applications of robotics and telerobotics. His interests shifted, between 1992 and 1999, from robotics to the sense of touch, leading him to delve deeply into multidisciplinary research by integrating biology, psychophysics, neuroscience, philosophy, and design. At McGill University, Vincent earned international recognition for his groundbreaking work in robotics and haptics.

In 2008, Vincent returned to France, where he held an international chair at ISIR (“Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique” in Paris) linked to the Pierre and Marie Curie University. He became one of the first French recipients of the European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant in 2009, followed by the prestigious ERC Proof of Concept Grant in 2014. Supported by a Leverhulme Trust fellowship, Vincent took a leave of absence between 2017 and 2018 to serve as a Professor of Tactile Perception and Technology at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London, UK. Simultaneously, Vincent cofounded Actronika, a Paris-based start-up dedicated to haptic technology. From 2016, he was passionately investing his time in the company's development.

Over the years, Vincent earned numerous accolades for his exceptional scientific contributions. He was elected as a Fellow of the IEEE in 2008. In 2019, he received the Grand Prix Inria of the Académie des Sciences and was elected a Member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2019. Vincent also organized multiple meetings, such as the ACFAS Congress symposium on tactile graphics (May 2006) in Montreal and Eurohaptics 2014 (June 24–27) that took place on the premises of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles, located in the former stables of the Château de Versailles.

Vincent was a leading contributor to tactile perception and the haptic sense. In the early 1990s, he designed the pantograph, a “force feedback” device to assist visually impaired individuals in accessing computers by transforming graphical representations into haptic representations and enabling blind users to interact with computers through movements and touch (Hayward, 2001; Ramstein & Hayward, 1994). Through this work, he demonstrated that haptic sensations involve more than simple mechanical signals and sensations, as blind users described their experiences using vivid three-dimensional terminology.

Reflecting on his work, Vincent said: “The Pantograph was, and still is, a fun project to work on. A most rewarding aspect is the spontaneous smiles consistently drawn from the occasional users. It's like as if something completely unexpected was happening. It is the case today like it was in 1993. There is an assumption that what we touch must be veridical, and that what we see or hear can be put in the box and can come out it. This is what made me become interested in touch. The name was taken not so much because of the number of links and joints in the mechanism, but because a similar structure served as a basis for John Isaac Hawkins’ ‘Polygraph’, suggesting the idea of duplication. Another aspect that motivated me in pursuing this project for so long is the mechanical simplicity of the device compared to the amazing large number of interesting questions it raises. I think they will not be answered any time soon” (Buxton, 2011).

Vincent's groundbreaking contributions to the scientific validation of touch perception are truly fascinating. During the early 2000s, he dedicated his research efforts to studying the human sense of touch, aiming to provide robust evidence for his prior observations on the graphical-haptic conversion system (Robles-De-La-Torre & Hayward, 2001). Through his pioneering work, Vincent demonstrated that touch perception involves internal processing by the nervous system, ultimately giving rise to conscious tactile sensations. His investigations were conducted with meticulous attention to detail, employing a diverse array of methods and paradigms to explore various aspects of touch perception, from experiments involving the anesthetization of digital nerves to eliminate skin sensations (Smith et al., 2009), utilizing lateral skin stretch stimulation (Hayward & Cruz-Hernández, 2000), creating haptic illusions of shape (Dostmohamed & Hayward, 2005; Wijntjes et al., 2009), movement (Terekhov & Hayward, 2015), and depth (Moscatelli et al., 2016), exploring spatial tactile illusions (Carter et al., 2008, Hayward, 2015), investigating tactile suppression phenomena (Ziat et al., 2010), to modulating scanning speeds on our ability to identify textures (Bochereau et al., 2018).

Recognizing the potential of his discoveries, Vincent cofounded Haptic Technologies Inc. in 1995, which utilized his knowledge to simplify hardware for interacting with computer-aided design software. The company was later sold to Immersion Corp. Vincent's work also influenced the design of virtual buttons on smartphones, and he worked as a consultant for Apple in 2013.

Vincent continued his research by exploring various invariants of physical or physiological origin related to touch perception. These invariants are important in understanding any organism or robot. By investigating touch mechanics and tribology, Vincent's work showed that the dynamic properties of the skin (Wang & Hayward, 2007), the low mechanical impedance of fingers (Wiertlewski & Hayward, 2012), and the role of water in tactile interactions with the skin contribute to our understanding of the extraordinary performance of touch in identifying and discriminating materials (Andre et al., 2011; Dzidek et al., 2017; Gueorguiev et al., 2016; Terekhov & Hayward, 2011).

Pushing the envelope even further, Vincent collaborated with Computational Neuroscience colleagues to analyze touch using physical methods, revealing insights into the function of the cuneate nucleus in the brain stem, where cutaneous data project onto the thalamus on their way to the cortex (Hayward et al., 2014; Jörntell et al., 2014). He also highlighted the role of mechanical waves in transducing tactile information (Shao et al., 2016) and modeled tactile information available in static contacts (Wang & Hayward, 2008).

Among his most recent published works, Vincent took immense pride in the HaptiComm project, a tactile communication device designed specifically for deafblind tactile fingerspelling (Duvernoy et al., 2023). Another publication in i-Perception concerned the knobby ball illusion, a demonstration of how deformations of the fingertip skin could lead to subsequent misperceptions of an object's shape (Tse & Hayward, 2023).

With a staggering portfolio comprising over 286 publications and more than 40 patents, Vincent Hayward's exceptional contributions have advanced our understanding of touch perception, opened new possibilities for haptic technology applications, and paved the way for further research related to touch perception.

I was Vincent's postdoctoral student and was very fortunate to have crossed his path. I am honoring his legacy by passing on his teaching and wisdom, and I am sure that his many former students are also immortalizing his contributions in a similar manner, along with many others.