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Touch plays a vital role in maintaining human relationships through social and emotional communication. The proposed haptic display prototype generates stimuli in vibrotactile and thermal modalities toward simulating social touch cues between remote users. High-dimensional spatiotemporal vibrotactile-thermal (vibrothermal) patterns were evaluated with ten participants. The device can be wirelessly operated to enable remote communication. In the future, such patterns can be used to richly simulate social touch cues. A research study was conducted in two parts: first, the identification accuracy of vibrothermal patterns was explored; and second, the relatability of vibrothermal patterns to social touch experienced during social interactions was evaluated. Results revealed that while complex patterns were difficult to identify, simpler patterns, such as SINGLE TAP and HOLD, were highly identifiable and highly relatable to social touch cues. Directional patterns were less identifiable and less relatable to the social touch cues experienced during social interaction.
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How Visualizing Touch Can Transform Perceptions of Intensity, Realism, and Emotion?
Social touch is a common method of communication between individuals, but touch cues alone provide only a glimpse of the entire interaction. Visual and auditory cues are also present in these interactions, and increase the expressiveness and recognition of the conveyed information. However, most mediated touch interactions have focused on providing only haptic cues to the user. Our research addresses this gap by adding visual cues to a mediated social touch interaction through an array of LEDs attached to a wearable device. This device consists of an array of voice-coil actuators that present normal force to the user’s forearm to recreate the sensation of social touch gestures. We conducted a human subject study (N = 20) to determine the relative importance of the touch and visual cues. Our results demonstrate that visual cues, particularly color and pattern, significantly enhance perceived realism, as well as alter perceived touch intensity, valence, and dominance of the mediated social touch. These results illustrate the importance of closely integrating multisensory cues to create more expressive and realistic virtual interactions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2047867
- PAR ID:
- 10567534
- Publisher / Repository:
- EuroHaptics 2024
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 978-3-031-70058-3
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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