Haptic Technology Adoption and Future Trends

This chapter investigates how haptic technology has evolved over the last six decades to aid planners and forecasters with their technology roadmapping activities. It presents and reviews data from two case studies that are central to haptic development: (i) the adoption of haptics in personal communication devices (pagers, smartphones, and laptops) and (ii) the adoption of haptics in the automobile industry. The findings highlight the varying speeds and factors that influence the diffusion and adoption of haptics across different devices, industries, and use cases. Then, this information is contextualized using several foresight frameworks, such as technology diffusion theory and gap matrix analysis. The gap matrix analysis details the prevalence of haptic technology across diverse application domains and identifies gaps in commercialization. Finally, the chapter analyzes intellectual property trends in the health, gaming, and automotive sectors, providing a chronological account of patent activity data to track the advancement and cross-domain diffusion of haptic innovations.