Haptic technology manufacturers such Nokia, LG and Motorola have included different types of haptic technologies in their devices; in most cases, this takes the form of vibration response to touch. Alpine Electronics uses a haptic feedback technology named "PulseTouch" on many of their touch-screen car navigation and stereo units. The Nexus One features haptic feedback, according to their specifications. Samsung first launched a phone with haptics in 2007. Surface haptics refers to the production of variable forces on a user's finger as it interacts with a surface, such as a touchscreen. Tanvas uses an electrostatic technology to control the in-plane forces experienced
Haptic technology engineers in London as part of The Shadow Project, now known as the Shadow Robot Company, an ongoing research and development program whose goal is to complete the first convincing artificial humanoid. An early prototype can be seen in NASA's collection of humanoid robots, or robonauts. The Shadow Hand has haptic sensors embedded in every joint and finger pad, which relay information to a central computer for processing and analysis. Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and Bielefeld University in Germany found The Shadow Hand to be an invaluable tool in advancing the understanding of haptic awareness, and in 2006 they