W5: Affective Haptics as a Direct Link to Emotion

Talk Summary

The Affective Dimensions of the Cutaneous Rabbit Effect (Mounia Ziat, Bentley University)

With the emergence of head-mounted displays for virtual or augmented reality, there is a need in creating new haptic technologies that contribute to the enhancement of user's immersion. During the design process, it is not sufficient only to focus on the reproduction of mechanical stimuli. It is also crucial to integrate emotional and social aspects of touch for a fully immersive experience. In this talk, I will present the findings of two studies in which we assessed the emotional dimensions of touch by exposing participants to visual images of saltatorial animals. The aim is to overcome technological challenges through better knowledge of the workings of the emotional brain.

Haptic Characteristics in Human Behavior through Neural Network Estimation (Yasutoshi Makino, University of Tokyo)

Human body movements contain a variety of information, from which we can obtain information about what we touch. For example, in pantomime, a light bag looks heavier when the performer moves in a certain way. By learning the relationship between body movement and the tactile properties of an object, a machine can also estimate the tactile information of the object from human movement. We show some examples of such studies and discuss the possibility of estimating emotional aspects from human movements.

Artificial Bodily Reactions via Haptic Feedbacks for Evoking Emotion (Takuji Narumi, University of Tokyo)

Recent cognitive studies revealed that emotion is evoked through the cognition and identification of the change in our body such as bodily reactions, and our perception of the body consists of multi-sensory integration. These findings suggest that haptic feedbacks which make us feel as if our bodily reactions evoke affects our emotion. In this talk, I will present examples of affective interfaces which can evoke emotion and affect our decision, action and cognitive abilities via the emotional change.

Neuro-Imaging and Neuro-Modulation of Somatosensory Information and Phantom Limb Pain (Takufumi Yanagisawa, Osaka University)

Neuro-imaging techniques reveal how tactile stimulation changes brain activities. It remains difficult, however, to induce or control natural perceptions by neuromodulation. Phantom limb pain is pain after limb amputation or deafferentation, and although the patients have lost sensation in the limb, they still feel its existence with uncontrollable pain. We have succeeded in controlling this pain by inducing cortical plasticity using a brain–machine interface. I will discuss how somatosensory information is represented in the brain and controlled to modulate phantom limb pain.

Social Touch in Human-Robot Interaction (Masahiro Shiomi, ATR)

Physical embodiment of social robots enables them to realize active social touch interaction, which plays an essential role in human-human interaction. We aim to develop a mechanism for safe and trustworthy social touch interaction between human and robots. In this presentation, I will introduce about our CREST project, “Computational Social Touch for Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction” and its latest progress, such as a fabric touch sensor, a huggable robot, a social touch display and so on.