Mediated Social Touch

Mediated Social Touch

Mediated social touch is social touch on distance. As one example we have a haptic sleeve containing an array of vibration motors and a controller, and also a touch sensitive patch to sense (social) touches. Two areas of further development here could include a mapping of sensor data to the sleeve that better matches the experience of a social touch given. For an application over internet suitable protocols and pairing functions could be developed.
Very welcome would be the use of other/new actuator and different settings (such as haptic emojis).
Another direction is on intrusiveness of mediated social touch: In physical proximity we can estimate whether a receiver may want a touch, a receiver can see a touch approaching and react accordingly. When giving a social touch at a distance we often do not see the context of the receiver. We are lacking a clear protocol for communication consent for mediated social touch. 
In a first study different protocols were explored that allow for consent in touch with a pair of touch sleeves (reference publication). 

Further directions to further develop the project are: 
- better textile integration of the sleeves (and multiple exemplars) that user tests on a larger scale can be performed 
- improvement of the electronic setup (what sensors and actuators are needed for a good experience? how are sensor data transformed to actuators?) 
- new interaction design and exploration of other protocols 
- an app that can support the configuration of the sleeves 
- an app that integrates texting with touch communication 
- user studies for user experience 

Contact Angelika Mader, if you are interested in a project.