Affective haptics

Affective haptics is an area of research which focuses on the study and design of devices and systems that can elicit, enhance, or influence the emotional state of a human by means of sense of touch. The research field is originated with the Dzmitry Tsetserukou and Alena Neviarouskaya papers[1][2] on affective haptics and real-time communication system with rich emotional and haptic channels. Driven by the motivation to enhance social interactivity and emotionally immersive experience of users of real-time messaging, virtual, augmented realities, the idea of reinforcing (intensifying) own feelings and reproducing (simulating) the emotions felt by the partner was proposed. Four basic haptic (tactile) channels governing our emotions can be distinguished:

  1. physiological changes (e.g., heart beat rate, body temperature, etc.)
  2. physical stimulation (e.g., tickling)
  3. social touch (e.g., hug, handshake)
  4. emotional haptic design (e.g., shape of device, material, texture).
  1. ^ Tsetserukou, Dzmitry; Alena Neviarouskaya; Helmut Prendinger; Naoki Kawakami; Mitsuru Ishizuka; Susumu Tachi (2009). "Enhancing Mediated Interpersonal Communication through Affective Haptics". Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. INTETAIN: International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering. Vol. 9. Amsterdam: Springer. pp. 246–251. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.674.243. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-02315-6_27. ISBN 978-3-642-02314-9.
  2. ^ Tsetserukou, Dzmitry; Alena Neviarouskaya; Helmut Prendinger; Naoki Kawakami; Susumu Tachi (2009). "Affective Haptics in Emotional Communication" (PDF). 2009 3rd International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: IEEE Press. pp. 181–186. doi:10.1109/ACII.2009.5349516. ISBN 978-1-4244-4800-5.