The Haptics Industry Forum (“HIF”), a global consortium that represents the interests of the haptics industry, is pleased to announce the appointment of Robert Desautels as Chairman of the Board and President. He will be replacing Dave Birnbaum. Mr. Desautels is an accomplished executive with nearly 40 years of experience in the high-technology sector. He is assuming his new role since January 11, 2022.

Robert is no stranger to the haptics sector. Serving as Chief Technology Officer at D-BOX for more than 12 years, he is the leader of the innovation and engineering department responsible for the development of haptic products and software. This experience provides him with a good understanding of the market, having developed solutions for the consumer (home entertainment, gaming and sim racing) and business (movie theaters, simulation & training, attractions) markets. Haptic technologies have seen dramatic increases in adoption and the HIF was created to give the main ecosystem participants the ability to define common standards as well as recommended practices and guidelines, maximizing interoperability and continued growth of the market. HIF’s common voice will permit decades of know-how to be pooled to facilitate adoption.

“I am honored to have been chosen to lead the HIF during this exciting period and am grateful to all members of the Board for my nomination. There are many exciting things happening in our industry and I will pursue ways in which our organization can participate and collaborate with all our members for the benefit of all. Our mission continues to be to address the common problems our industry faces. To that end, the Haptics Industry Forum provides the unified, consistent voice of the haptics industry to the wider technology ecosystem.” – Robert Desautels, Chief Technology Officer at D-BOX

HIF’s mission is to address common problems the industry faces. It provides the unified, consistent voice of the haptics industry to the wider technology ecosystem. It publishes influential standardization documents and acts as a commercial liaison to accelerate the adoption of haptic technology, allowing haptics to become a peer of audio and visual technology as well as an indispensable part of the everyday digital products and services that matter to people.

About the Haptics Industry Forum
The Haptics Industry Forum is a consortium that represents the interests of the haptics industry. It’s a group of entities in the haptics industry that includes hardware manufacturers, middleware providers, application developers, researchers, and others who work across all levels of the haptic stack. Members of the Haptics Industry Forum are committed to working together to develop and support haptic standards in ways that enable the market, including licensing, quality and performance metrics, APIs, codecs, and more. Visit www.hapticsif.org