Humans Sensitivity Distribution in Perceptual Space by a Wearable Haptic Sleeve

It is very important to understand humans’ perception when the other communication modalities like vision and audition are partially or fully impaired. Therefore, this paper tries to give a brief overview on humans’ sensitivity distribution in perceptual space. During our experiments, a wearable haptic sleeve consisted of 7 vibro-actuators was used to stimulate subjects arm to convey haptic feedback. The basic research questions in this study are: 1) whether humans’ perception linearly correlated with the actuation frequency, haptic feedback in our scenario 2) humans’ ability to generalise templates via the wearable haptic sleeve. Those findings would be useful to increase humans’ perception when humans have to work with fully or partially impaired perception in their day-to-day life

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2022, held in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2022. The 36 regular papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 129 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: haptic science; haptic technology; and haptic applications

Investigating Social Haptic Illusions for Tactile Stroking (SHIFTS)

A common and effective form of social touch is stroking on the forearm. We seek to replicate this stroking sensation using haptic illusions. This work compares two methods that provide sequential discrete stimulation: sequential normal indentation and sequential lateral skin-slip using discrete actuators. Our goals are to understand which form of stimulation more effectively creates a continuous stroking sensation, and how many discrete contact points are needed. We performed a study with 20 participants in which they rated sensations from the haptic devices on continuity and pleasantness. We found that lateral skin-slip created a more continuous sensation, and decreasing the number of contact points decreased the continuity. These results inform the design of future wearable haptic devices and the creation of haptic signals for effective social communication.Comment: To be published in IEEE Haptics Symposium 202

DragTapVib: An On-Skin Electromagnetic Drag, Tap, and Vibration Actuator for Wearable Computing

The skin, as the largest organ distributed all over the human body, offers excellent opportunities for different kinds of input stimuli. However, most of the haptic devices can only render single sensations or they need to combine multiple complex components for generating multiple sensations. We present “DragTapVib” in this paper, a novel, ultra-low-cost, wearable actuator that can reliably provide dragging, tapping, and vibrating sensations to the user. Our actuator is fully electromagnetically-actuated with a moving tactor that can render three haptic feedbacks through systematically controlling the current inside the flexible PCBs. The actuator can be arranged with varying parts of the body which enriches the potentials to implement promising application scenarios including delivering the notification and providing immersive haptic feedback either in virtual reality or in gameplay. A prototypical technical evaluation demonstrated the mechanical properties of our actuator. We quantitatively conducted a series of psychophysical user studies (N= 12) to reveal the feasibility of our prototype. The overall absolute identification study for distinguishing three sensations accuracy at two body locations reached up to 97.2%

Social Touch

Interpersonal or social touch is an intuitive and powerful way to express and communicate emotions, comfort a friend, bond with teammates, comfort a child in pain, and soothe someone who is stressed. If there is one thing that the current pandemic is showing us, it is that social distancing can make some people crave physical interaction through social touch. The notion of “skin-hunger” has become tangible for many.Social touch differs at a functional and anatomical level from discriminative touch, and has clear effects at physiological, emotional, and behavioural levels. Social touch is a topic in psychology (perception, emotion, behaviour), neuroscience (neurophysiological pathways), computer science (mediated touch communication), engineering (haptic devices), robotics (social robots that can touch), humanities (science and technology studies), and sociology (the social implications of touch). Our current scientific knowledge of social touch is scattered across disciplines and not yet adequate for the purpose of meeting today's challenges of connecting human beings through the mediating channel of technology

The snake effect: Investigation of a novel haptic illusion

This study was based on tactual illusions produced by vibrotactile units. A novel haptic effect based on amplitude modulation was developed, called here the ”snake effect”, which consists on a continuous motion that is smooth, wavy and creepy. Two studies were conducted in order to parameterize this novel haptic effect aiming to: (1) find the fundamental parameters that allow the snake effect to happen in a straight line, (2) assess if the parameters can be implemented for curved trajectories after being combined with funneling, as seen for apparent motion in literature. Study 1 used a 2x6 haptic display in the dorsal part of the forearm, consisted of a pilot and a main study. Participants were asked to rate how the effect was being perceived in an adaptive method. It was found that the effect has a lower and an upper SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony) boundaries and that lower stimulus durations cause a decrease in smoothness and creepiness. It was also found that not every amplitude modulation works to produce the snake effect, and that the best options among the ones investigated are Sine, Sine-Squared and Gaussian modulation types. Study 2 used a 4x4 haptic display in the left forearm and asked participants to draw the motion and direction of movement they perceived in a sheet of paper. In this study, it was found that the direction of movement is easier to tell than the trajectory itself. Also, that the beginning and ending of the motion are harder to feel than the middle of the movement. These findings provide relevant parameters to apply this new haptic effect based on vibrotactile actuators in current and future haptic displays

A Systematic Review of Weight Perception in Virtual Reality: Techniques, Challenges, and Road Ahead

Weight is perceived through the combination of multiple sensory systems, and a wide range of factors – including touch, visual, and force senses – can influence the perception of heaviness. There have been remarkable advancements in the development of haptic interfaces throughout the years. However, a number of challenges limit the progression to enable humans to sense the weight in virtual reality (VR). This article presents an overview of the factors that influence how weight is perceived and the phenomenon that contributes to various types of weight illusions. A systematic review has been undertaken to assess the development of weight perception in VR, underlying haptic technology that renders the mass of a virtual object, and the creation of weight perception through pseudo-haptic. We summarize the approaches from the perspective of haptic and pseudo-haptic cues that exhibit the sense of weight such as force, skin deformation, vibration, inertia, control–display ratio, velocity, body gestures, and audio–visual representation. The design challenges are underlined, and research gaps are discussed, including accuracy and precision, weight discrimination, heavyweight rendering, and absolute weight simulation. This article is anticipated to aid in the development of more realistic weight perception in VR and stimulated new research interest in this topic

Musical Haptics

Haptic Musical Instruments; Haptic Psychophysics; Interface Design and Evaluation; User Experience; Musical Performanc

Touch Technology in Affective Human, Robot, Virtual-Human Interactions: A Survey

Given the importance of affective touch in human interactions, technology designers are increasingly attempting to bring this modality to the core of interactive technology. Advances in haptics and touch-sensing technology have been critical to fostering interest in this area. In this survey, we review how affective touch is investigated to enhance and support the human experience with or through technology. We explore this question across three different research areas to highlight their epistemology, main findings, and the challenges that persist. First, we review affective touch technology through the human–computer interaction literature to understand how it has been applied to the mediation of human–human interaction and its roles in other human interactions particularly with oneself, augmented objects/media, and affect-aware devices. We further highlight the datasets and methods that have been investigated for automatic detection and interpretation of affective touch in this area. In addition, we discuss the modalities of affective touch expressions in both humans and technology in these interactions. Second, we separately review how affective touch has been explored in human–robot and real-human–virtual-human interactions where the technical challenges encountered and the types of experience aimed at are different. We conclude with a discussion of the gaps and challenges that emerge from the review to steer research in directions that are critical for advancing affective touch technology and recognition systems. In our discussion, we also raise ethical issues that should be considered for responsible innovation in this growing area

Haptic Interaction with a Guide Robot in Zero Visibility

Search and rescue operations are often undertaken in dark and noisy environment in which rescue team must rely on haptic feedback for exploration and safe exit. However, little attention has been paid specifically to haptic sensitivity in such contexts or the possibility of enhancing communicational proficiency in the haptic mode as a life-preserving measure. The potential of root swarms for search and rescue has been shown by the Guardians project (EU, 2006-2010); however the project also showed the problem of human robot interaction in smoky (non-visibility) and noisy conditions. The REINS project (UK, 2011-2015) focused on human robot interaction in such conditions. This research is a body of work (done as a part of he REINS project) which investigates the haptic interaction of a person wit a guide robot in zero visibility. The thesis firstly reflects upon real world scenarios where people make use of the haptic sense to interact in zero visibility (such as interaction among firefighters and symbiotic relationship between visually impaired people and guide dogs). In addition, it reflects on the sensitivity and trainability of the haptic sense, to be used for the interaction. The thesis presents an analysis and evaluation of the design of a physical interface (Designed by the consortium of the REINS project) connecting the human and the robotic guide in poor visibility conditions. Finally, it lays a foundation for the design of test cases to evaluate human robot haptic interaction, taking into consideration the two aspects of the interaction, namely locomotion guidance and environmental exploration