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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Robot. AI
Sec. Human-Robot Interaction
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frobt.2024.1419262
This article is part of the Research Topic Perceiving, Generating, and Interpreting Affect in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) View all 7 articles

Simulating the Psychological and Neural Effects of Affective Touch with Soft Robotics: An Experimental Study

Provisionally accepted
Caroline Yan Zheng Caroline Yan Zheng 1*Ker-Jiun Wang Ker-Jiun Wang 2Maitreyee Wairagkar Maitreyee Wairagkar 3,4Mariana von Mohr Mariana von Mohr 5Erik Lintunen Erik Lintunen 1Aikaterini (Katerina) Fotopoulou Aikaterini (Katerina) Fotopoulou 6
  • 1 Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom
  • 2 University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
  • 3 Imperial College London, London, England, United Kingdom
  • 4 Dementia Research Institute, Imperial College London, London, England, United Kingdom
  • 5 Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, United Kingdom
  • 6 Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Human affective touch is known to be beneficial for social-emotional interactions and has a therapeutic effect. For touch initiated by robotic entities, richer affective affordance is a critical enabler to unlock its potential in social-emotional interactions and especially in care and therapeutic applications. Simulating the attributes of particular types of human affective touch to inform robotic touch design can be a beneficial step. Inspired by the scientific finding on CT-optimal affective touch -a gentle skin stroking at velocities of 1-10cm/s evidenced to be pleasant and calming, we developed a proof-of-concept haptic rendering system -S-CAT, using pneumatic silicone soft robotic material to simulates the attributes (velocity, temperature and applied normal force) of CT-optimal affective touch. To investigate whether the affective touch performed by the S-CAT system elicits psychological effects comparable to CT-optimal, manual affective touch, we conducted an experimental study comparing the effects of CT-optimal versus non-CT-optimal stimulation velocities in each of three types of stimulation modes (S-CAT device, skin-to-skin manual stroking, hairbrush manual stroking), and across them. Our measures included subjective ratings of touch pleasantness and intensity, neurophysiological responses (EEG), and qualitative comments. Our results showed that velocity modulated subjective and neurophysiological responses in each and across these three stimulation modes, and that CT-optimal stimulations from S-CAT system and manual method received similar ratings and verbal comment on pleasantness, suggesting that the S-CAT touch can have comparable effects to manual stroking. We discuss the design insights learned and the design space that this study opens up to support well-being and healthcare.

    Keywords: affective touch, CT-optimal, Affective haptics, soft robotics, S-CAT system, Haptic rendering design

    Received: 18 Apr 2024; Accepted: 17 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zheng, Wang, Wairagkar, von Mohr, Lintunen and Fotopoulou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Caroline Yan Zheng, Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.