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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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Haptiknit: Distributed stiffness knitting for wearable haptics
Haptic devices typically rely on rigid actuators and bulky power supply systems, limiting wearability. Soft materials improve comfort, but careful distribution of stiffness is required to ground actuation forces and enable load transfer to the skin. We present Haptiknit, an approach in which soft, wearable, knit textiles with embedded pneumatic actuators enable programmable haptic display. By integrating pneumatic actuators within high- and low-stiffness machine-knit layers, each actuator can transmit 40 newtons in force with a bandwidth of 14.5 hertz. We demonstrate the concept with an adjustable sleeve for the forearm coupled to an untethered pneumatic control system that conveys a diverse array of social touch signals. We assessed the sleeve’s performance for discriminative and affective touch in a three-part user study and compared our results with those of prior electromagnetically actuated approaches. Haptiknit improves touch localization compared with vibrotactile stimulation and communicates social touch cues with fewer actuators than pneumatic textiles that do not invoke distributed stiffness. The Haptiknit sleeve resulted in similar recognition of social touch gestures compared to a voice-coil array but represented a more portable and comfortable form factor.
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- PAR ID:
- 10570585
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Science Robotics
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 97
- ISSN:
- 2470-9476
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.ado3887
