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extended-abstract

A tool to study affective touch

Published: 04 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Touch is an important part of many forms of emotional communication, but has been studied far less than visual and auditory expressions of affect. We are developing the Haptic Creature to investigate fundamentals of affective touch, and its applications in companionship and anxiety management. This small robot senses the world solely by being touched, and communicates its internal state via vibrotactile purring, stiffening its ears, and modulating its breathing. This paper outlines the motivation for its creation and design, and overviews the current version of its architecture and mechatronics.

References

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Field, T., Touch: MIT Press, 2003.
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Fisher, J. D., Rytting, M., et al., "Hands Touching Hands: Affective and Evaluative Effects of an Interpersonal Touch," Sociometry, vol. 39:4, pp. 416--421, 1976.
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Fujita, M. and Kitano, H., "Development of an Autonomous Quadruped Robot for Robot Entertainment," Autonomous Robots, vol. 5:1, Springer, pp. 7--18, 1998.
[5]
Hall, J. P., Jeyasurya, J., et al., "Towards an Experimental Model for Exploring the Role of Touch in Anxiety Reduction," UBC Computer Science, Vancouver, Canada, 8 pages, TR-2009-02, http://www.cs.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/tr.
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Montagu, A., Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, 3rd ed. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1986.
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Mori, M., "Bukimi No Tani "The Uncanny Valley"," Energy, vol. 7:3, Originally in Japanese (K. F. MacDorman & T. Minato, trans., 2005), pp. 33--35, 1970.
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Shibata, T., Mitsui, T., et al., "Mental Commit Robot and Its Application to Therapy of Children," in Proc. of IEEE/ASME Int'l Conf on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM '01), 2, pp. 1053--1058, 2001.
[9]
Stiehl, W. D., Lieberman, J., et al., "Design of a Therapeutic Robotic Companion for Relational, Affective Touch," in Proc. of IEEE Int'l Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN 2005), pp. 408--415, 2005.
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Yohanan, S., Chan, M., et al., "Hapticat: Exploration of Affective Touch," in Proc. of 7th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI '05), Trento, Italy, pp. 244--251, 2005.
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Yohanan, S. and MacLean, K. E., "The Haptic Creature Project: Social Human-Robot Interaction through Affective Touch," in Proc. of The Reign of Katz and Dogz, 2nd AISB Symp on the Role of Virtual Creatures in a Computerised Society (AISB '08), Aberdeen, UK, pp. 7--11, 2008.

Cited By

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  • (2025)Affective Touching10.1017/9781009484404Online publication date: 20-Feb-2025
  • (2024)Ommie: The Design and Development of a Social Robot for Anxiety ReductionACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3706122Online publication date: 5-Dec-2024
  • (2024)Tangible Affect: A Literature Review of Tangible Interactive Systems Addressing Human Core Affect, Emotions and MoodsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661608(424-440)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '09: CHI '09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2009
2470 pages
ISBN:9781605582474
DOI:10.1145/1520340
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 April 2009

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Author Tags

  1. affective touch
  2. haptic interface
  3. human-animal interaction
  4. human-robot interaction
  5. social touch

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CHI '09
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CHI EA '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 385 of 1,130 submissions, 34%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Affective Touching10.1017/9781009484404Online publication date: 20-Feb-2025
  • (2024)Ommie: The Design and Development of a Social Robot for Anxiety ReductionACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3706122Online publication date: 5-Dec-2024
  • (2024)Tangible Affect: A Literature Review of Tangible Interactive Systems Addressing Human Core Affect, Emotions and MoodsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661608(424-440)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2023)Application of Social Robots in Healthcare: Review on Characteristics, Requirements, Technical SolutionsSensors10.3390/s2315682023:15(6820)Online publication date: 31-Jul-2023
  • (2023)The Evolving Design of a Socially Therapeutic Robotic Dog*2023 World Symposium on Digital Intelligence for Systems and Machines (DISA)10.1109/DISA59116.2023.10308940(90-97)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2023
  • (2021)Exploring the Design Space of Therapeutic Robot Companions for ChildrenProceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3434073.3444669(243-251)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2021
  • (2021)Development of a Variable-Softness Robot by Using Thermoresponsive Hydrogels for Haptic Interaction with Humans2021 IEEE 4th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)10.1109/RoboSoft51838.2021.9479205(254-260)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2021
  • (2020)Effects of Motion Parameters on Acceptability of Human-Robot Patting Touch2020 IEEE Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS)10.1109/HAPTICS45997.2020.ras.HAP20.36.d8bb0c58(664-670)Online publication date: Mar-2020
  • (2020)An Extended Framework for Characterizing Social RobotsHuman-Robot Interaction10.1007/978-3-030-42307-0_2(21-64)Online publication date: 14-May-2020
  • (2019)MMRPet: Modular Mixed Reality Pet System Based on Passive PropsImage and Graphics Technologies and Applications10.1007/978-981-13-9917-6_61(645-658)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2019
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