Haptic Controller with Touch-Sensitive Control Knob

Example implementations may relate to a haptic hand-holdable controller. In particular, an example device may take the form of a haptic controller, which senses tactile information and provides force feedback for a more intuitive user experience. The force feedback may indicate a state of the device that is being controlled. An example haptic handheld controller may be utilized to manipulate data input to a robot, a tablet computer, and/or any other type of computing device. In an example embodiment, the haptic handheld controller may be such that the controller indicates to the user what manipulation of different types of data feels like, for example, by using operating modes for the haptic handheld controller where a motor varies feedback to the handheld controller.