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Haptics Industry Forum

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Haptics Industry Forum
Information
Type Consortium
Industry Haptics
Founded December 2019 (founding meeting)
Founder Immersion Corporation
Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
Notable Personnel Elisa Santella (president); Manuel Cruz, Tim Szeto, Sebastien Boire-Lavigne, Priyank Gajiwala, Nesh Gandhe, Ethan Sturm (board members)
Products HD haptic actuator specification; Recommended Practices for Haptics in Enterprise VR; OpenXR advanced haptics API proposal
Website https://hapticsif.org


The Haptics Industry Forum (HIF) is an industry consortium of companies and academic institutions that work on haptics (touch feedback) technology. It develops recommended practices, test specifications and position papers, and it works with standards bodies such as the Khronos Group and the IEEE on haptics standards, including haptics support in the OpenXR standard for virtual and augmented reality.[1][2] Immersion Corporation set the forum up; the forum dates its founding meeting to December 2019, and Immersion announced it in a press release on 8 July 2020, which said the forum had more than 25 participants from 14 technology companies and academia.[3][4]

The forum's XR working group wrote recommended practices for haptics in enterprise virtual reality, signed a liaison agreement with Khronos in March 2022 and submitted a proposal for advanced haptics APIs to the OpenXR working group later that year.[5] Its website also lists working groups for automotive, gaming, touchpads, protocols and APIs, and actuation measurements.[1]

Reviewed 13 October 2026. Checked every dated fact, name, quote and number against the cited pages: archived 2020-2021 HIF site pages, the 2020 Business Wire release, the Immersion, IEEE SA, Khronos, Auganix, SenseGlove and D-BOX posts, the XR working group pages, the 2024 and 2025 board/president releases, the live members list (including tier logos) and the three RFPs. About review dates.

History

Founding (2019-2020)

According to the forum's standards strategy, published in 2021, its founding meeting took place in December 2019. The industry experts at that meeting "aligned on a common need to provide a standard mechanism for abstracting devices and platforms from content".[4] The first website, at hapticsindustryforum.org, described the group as hardware manufacturers, middleware providers, application developers "and others who work across all levels of the haptic technology stack". It said the members wanted to standardize haptics to deal with interoperability ("breaking down 'walled gardens' for content creators and users alike"), licensing, quality and performance metrics, APIs and codecs. It invited companies and academic institutions to request membership.[6]

Immersion announced the forum in a press release of 8 July 2020 about its standards proposals. The release said Immersion "has established a new open Haptics Industry Forum to facilitate the sharing of ideas and information to help solve industry-wide challenges". The same release reported that Immersion's proposals for haptics in ATSC 3.0, the MPEG ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF), MPEG-DASH and MPEG-I had been accepted for consideration by the Advanced Television Systems Committee and the Moving Picture Experts Group.[3] By October 2020 the forum's website was at hapticsif.org, and on 16 October 2020 it released a specification for "HD haptic" actuators. The specification covers inertial vibration actuators and defines standard metrics and tests so that actuators can be compared consistently.[7]

Standards strategy and liaisons (2021-2022)

On 21 May 2021 the forum published its standards strategy. It described a two-part approach: standards for haptic representation and coding, so that content creators can sell haptic content that plays on many devices, and standards for device manufacturers.[8] The longer explainer on its standards page listed three agenda items:[4]

  • Haptic experience encoding. Immersion had led work in MPEG since the founding meeting. Haptics was under consideration as a first-order media type alongside audio and video, and MPEG had issued a call for proposals for a coded representation of haptic signals as part of its MPEG-Immersive program. The forum said it was seeking liaison status with ISO to pass member contributions to MPEG.
  • Haptic platform API. No standard API let developers drive a broad range of haptic hardware without device-specific code. The forum said it was in a liaison relationship with Khronos aimed at the OpenXR and glTF working groups, and that it would engage the IEEE P2861.3 group working on mobile haptics API standards.
  • Device protocol. The existing USB HID protocol for haptics, ratified in 2016, was mainly meant for single triggered effects. The forum formed a HID working group in April 2021, which it expected to register a new haptic usage page for HID before 30 June 2021.

In a November 2021 article on the approval of haptics support in ISOBMFF, Immersion described the HIF as "a fee-based consortium" whose working groups produce recommended practices and position papers "that are ingested into the standards process".[9]

In January 2022 the forum also announced a collaboration with the IEEE Consumer Technology Society's Open Integration Working Group (OIWG) and the IEEE Standards Association on open haptics standards. The two groups said they would connect existing work, avoid duplicated effort and harmonize their outputs. Chris Ullrich, described as an HIF founding board member, said: "Our goal at HIF is to align the haptics industry to create a fertile framework for content creators."[10]

On 10 March 2022 HIF and the Khronos Group announced a cooperative liaison agreement to encourage the integration of advanced haptics into OpenXR, the royalty-free standard for cross-platform access to virtual and augmented reality devices. Brent Insko of Intel, chair of the OpenXR working group, said the group would work with the HIF XR working group "to define the APIs". The HIF side was represented by Eric Vezzoli, chair of the XR working group, CEO of Interhaptics and an HIF board member.[2][11]

Later work (2023 to present)

The forum's later output includes two automotive documents, "Recommended Practices for Haptics in Automotive" (January 2023) and "Measuring Haptics in Touch-Sensitive Automotive User Interfaces" (June 2023), and questionnaires about haptics for game studios (December 2023) and for gamers (February 2025).[1] Its Haptic Protocols working group, chaired by Tim Szeto, issued a request for proposals on 25 September 2024 for defining haptic primitives in a "Universal Haptics API", with submissions due by 30 November 2024.[12] A second request, released on 22 September 2025, sought a vendor to build a modular haptic development kit for members.[13] On 11 September 2026 the forum asked vendors to propose a standardized haptic trackpad tester. The aim is a future test standard for Windows trackpads, prompted by the haptic features added in Windows 11; proposals were due by 16 October 2026.[14]

XR working group

The XR working group's mandate is to publish reference practices, standards and documentation that foster the adoption of haptics in extended reality, and to sign liaisons with relevant consortiums and standards development organizations. Its chair is Eric Vezzoli of Interhaptics and Razer. The group page lists Razer, Interhaptics, SenseGlove, Logitech, Titan Haptics, InterDigital and bHaptics as active members.[5]

Date Deliverable Notes
May 2021 Recommended Practices for Haptics in Enterprise VR The group's first deliverable, aimed at product and program managers adding haptic feedback to enterprise VR projects. Its authors came from Contaxtual Labs, Interhaptics, Immersion, SenseGlove, HaptX and Ultraleap.[15]
March 2022 Book, Haptics in XR: Design and Implementation Listed by the group as a deliverable. The co-authors were Gijs den Butter (SenseGlove), Chris Ullrich (Immersion), Rafal Pijewski (Actronika) and Eric Vezzoli (Interhaptics); SenseGlove announced the launch on 20 April 2022.[5][16]
March 2022 Liaison with the Khronos Group Cooperative liaison focused on haptics in OpenXR.[2]
April/May 2022 MIT lesson on XR haptics Vezzoli taught a session on 15 April in an MIT course on virtualizing the human body; the group page dates the masterclass to May 2022.[17][5]
October 2022 OpenXR advanced haptics APIs proposal High-level API proposal submitted to the OpenXR working group and scheduled for discussion at the OpenXR face-to-face meeting in Phoenix on 17 to 19 October 2022.[18]

The OpenXR proposal was designed by SenseGlove, Actronika, Interhaptics/Razer, AAC Technologies and Immersion. Its architecture targets full-body wearable and handheld haptics in 3D space, defines haptic targets independently of the device used, and describes effects in terms of perception rather than the actuator. The group said the APIs would be able to process the MPEG haptics format (.hjif), IEEE P2861.3 haptics assets, and proprietary formats such as Apple's .AHAP, Immersion's .IVS and Interhaptics' .haps.[18]

Organization and membership

HIF describes itself as a global non-profit organization that brings together companies, researchers and innovators.[19] In 2021 its website gave a mailing address in Beaverton, Oregon; the current site lists a San Francisco address.[8][1] Members belong to one of four tiers. The members list page, as of October 2026, shows the following organizations (identified from their logos):[20]

Tier Members
Principal InterDigital, Logitech
Contributor bHaptics, Cirque, D-BOX, Dell, Microsoft, Synaptics
Supporter Azoteq, Bestar Technologies, Grewus, Innovobot, iRacing, TDK, Titan Haptics, Razer
Associate CanHaptics, University of Dundee, Hamburg University of Technology, Tampere University

Leadership

President Affiliation Term
Dave Birnbaum Until January 2022[21]
Robert Desautels D-BOX Technologies (chief technology officer) Chairman of the board and president from 11 January 2022[21]
Manuel Cruz Innovobot Labs Chairman of the board and president from 13 September 2023 (announced 27 February 2024)[22]
Elisa Santella Grewus Listed as president on the members list in October 2026[20]

When Cruz's appointment was announced, the forum said he also led its touchpad working group, which he had recently launched.[22] In December 2025 HIF announced the results of a board election. Elisa Santella (Grewus), Tim Szeto (Titan Haptics), Priyank Gajiwala (Dell), Sebastien Boire-Lavigne (D-BOX) and Manuel Cruz (Innovobot Labs) were re-elected, and Nesh Gandhe (Microsoft) and Ethan Sturm (Cirque) joined for the first time. The new board's term began in January 2026, and under the forum's bylaws the board elects the officers.[19][20]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Haptics Industry Forum - Home". Haptics Industry Forum. https://hapticsif.org/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Haptics Industry Forum and Khronos forge Cooperative Liaison to bring Haptics to the Metaverse". The Khronos Group. 2022-03-10. https://www.khronos.org/news/press/haptics-industry-forum-and-khronos-forge-cooperative-liaison-to-bring-haptics-to-the-metaverse. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Immersion Leads Creation of Standards for Haptics". Business Wire. Immersion Corporation. 2020-07-08. https://web.archive.org/web/2020/https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200708005331/en/Immersion-Leads-Creation-Standards-Haptics. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Standards". Haptics Industry Forum (archived at the Internet Archive). 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210614074913/http://hapticsif.org/standards/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "XR". Haptics Industry Forum. https://hapticsif.org/xr/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  6. ↑ "Haptic Industry Forum". Haptics Industry Forum (archived at the Internet Archive). 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200801061153/https://hapticsindustryforum.org/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  7. ↑ "New specification for HD haptics released". Haptics Industry Forum (archived at the Internet Archive). 2020-10-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20201101072829/https://hapticsif.org/new-specification-for-hd-haptics-released/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Haptics Industry Forum announces standards strategy". Haptics Industry Forum (archived at the Internet Archive). 2021-05-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20210625043324/https://hapticsif.org/the-standards-strategy-of-haptics-industry-forum/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  9. ↑ "MPEG Standardization is a Watershed Moment for Haptics". Immersion Corporation. 2021-11-18. https://www.immersion.com/?p=27208. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  10. ↑ "Working Together to Enhance Open Standardization for Haptics Technologies". IEEE P2861.x Family Standards. IEEE Standards Association. 2022-01-19. https://sagroups.ieee.org/2861/2022/01/19/working-together-to-enhance-open-standardization-for-haptics-technologies/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  11. ↑ Sam Sprigg (2022-03-16). "The Khronos Group enters cooperation agreement with the Haptics Industry Forum to bring Haptics to the Metaverse". Auganix. https://www.auganix.org/?p=11781. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  12. ↑ "Haptics Industry Forum (HIF) Request for Proposals (RFP): Standardizing Haptic Primitives in a Universal Haptics API". Haptics Industry Forum. https://hapticsif.org/haptics-industry-forum-hif-request-for-proposals-rfp-standardizing-haptic-primitives-in-a-universal-haptics-api/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  13. ↑ "Request for Proposal (RFP): Haptic Development Kit". Haptics Industry Forum. https://hapticsif.org/request-for-proposal-rfp-haptic-development-kit/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  14. ↑ "Request for Proposal (RFP): Standardized Haptic Trackpad Tester". Haptics Industry Forum. 2026-09-11. https://hapticsif.org/request-for-proposal-rfp-standardized-haptic-trackpad-tester/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  15. ↑ "Recommended Practices for Haptics in Enterprise VR". Haptics Industry Forum. 2021-05-20. https://hapticsif.org/recommended-practices-for-haptics-in-enterprise-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  16. ↑ "Book launch Haptics in XR: Design and Implementation". SenseGlove. 2022-04-20. https://www.senseglove.com/book-launch-haptics-in-xr-design-and-implementation/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  17. ↑ "MIT Lesson - XR Haptics". Haptics Industry Forum. 2022-04-19. https://hapticsif.org/mit-lesson-xr-haptics/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 "XR Haptics - Open XR Advanced Haptics APIs Proposal". Haptics Industry Forum. 2022-10-19. https://hapticsif.org/xr-haptics-open-xr-advanced-haptics-apis-proposal/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 "Haptic Industry Forum Announces New Board of Directors". Haptics Industry Forum. 2025-12-15. https://hapticsif.org/haptic-industry-forum-announces-new-board-of-directors/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 "Members List". Haptics Industry Forum. https://hapticsif.org/members-list/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 "Haptics Industry Forum Appoints Robert Desautels as Chairman of the Board and President". D-BOX Technologies. 2022-01-18. https://www.d-box.com/en/news/haptics-industry-forum-appoints-robert-desautels-as-chairman-of-the-board-and-president. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 "Manuel Cruz Appointed Chairman of the Board and President of the Haptics Industry Forum". Haptics Industry Forum. 2024-02-27. https://hapticsif.org/manuel-cruz-appointed-chairman-of-the-board-and-president-of-the-haptics-industry-forum/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
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