Eckehard Steinbach

Eckehard Steinbach (born 1969) is a German electrical engineer and academic who is professor of media technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). His research includes audiovisual and haptic information processing and communication, telepresence, teleoperation, multimedia systems, indoor localization and machine-learning-based analysis of visual and haptic data.

Education and career Steinbach studied electrical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe, the University of Essex and ESIEE Paris.

In an interview published by CORDIS, the European Commission's research-results service, Steinbach described teleoperation with haptic feedback as one of the main application scenarios for haptic communication. He later chaired the IEEE P1918.1.1 Haptic Codec Task Group on haptic codecs for the Tactile Internet. IEEE 1918.1.1-2024, the IEEE Standard for Haptic Codecs for the Tactile Internet, was published on 14 June 2024. According to TUM and reporting by Ingenieur.de, the standardization effort was carried out under a consortium led by TUM and involved researchers led by Steinbach.

Honours and recognition Steinbach received the 2011 Research Award Technical Communications (Forschungspreis Technische Kommunikation) of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation for Communications Research for work on haptic communication and telepresence. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2015 for contributions to visual and haptic communications. According to TUM, his other distinctions include an ERC Starting Grant (2011–2015), the VDE-ITG Publication Award (2009), and the Best Technology Paper Award at IEEE World Haptics (2009).

Selected publications