Simulating the psychological and neural effects of affective touch with soft robotics: an experimental study.

ABSTRACT: 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 1-10 cm/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 simulate the attributes (velocity, temperature and applied normal force) of CT-optimal af

SUBMITTER: Zheng CY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11638054 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature