The ten rules of touch : Guidelines for social agents and robots that can touch

Touching is essential in interpersonal and affective communication, yet most social agents lack the capability to touch the user. In this paper we show the credibility of three premises that make the case that providing touch capability to social robots will increase their effectiveness in communicating emotions, building trust and achieving behavioral changes. The first premise is that humans can communicate distinct emotions through touch only, the second is that this is also possible through mediated (virtual) touch, and the third is that social agents can use the same mediated touch technology as effectively as humans. Based on a literature review, we also formulate ten design rules as guidance for the development of social agents that can touch. These rules concern parameters that regulate the meaning of touch cues like context and familiarity, the implicit and explicit meanings of touch, individual differences, and parameters that can be communicated through affective touch.

[1]  T. Field.  Touch for Socioemotional and Physical Well-Being: A Review. , 2010 .

[2]  Ho-Joon Lee,et al.  A ubiquitous Smart Parenting and Customized Education service robot , 2010, 2010 IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts.

[3]  Shuo Wang,et al.  Squeeze me, but don't tease me: Human and mechanical touch enhance visual attention and emotion discrimination , 2011, Social neuroscience.

[4]  Michael W. Kraus,et al.  Tactile communication, cooperation, and performance: an ethological study of the NBA. , 2010, Emotion.

[5]  C. Spence,et al.  The science of interpersonal touch: An overview , 2010, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[6]  J.B.F. van Erp.  Tactile displays for navigation and orientation : perception and behaviour , 2007 .

[7]  J.B.F. van Erp,et al.  Guidelines for the use of vibro-tactile displays in human computer interaction , 2002 .

[8]  Shafiq ur Réhman,et al.  iFeeling: Vibrotactile Rendering of Human Emotions on Mobile Phones , 2008, WMMP.

[9]  H. Harlow,et al.  Affectional responses in the infant monkey; orphaned baby monkeys develop a strong and persistent attachment to inanimate surrogate mothers. , 1959, Science.

[10]  Henrik Schärfe,et al.  Initial Formation of Trust: Designing an Interaction with Geminoid-DK to Promote a Positive Attitude for Cooperation , 2011, ICSR.

[11]  J. V. Erp,et al.  Vibrotactile in-vehicle navigation system , 2004 .

[12]  Stephen A. Brewster,et al.  Setting the Standards for Haptic and Tactile Interactions: ISO's Work , 2010, EuroHaptics.

[13]  Timothy W. Bickmore,et al.  Empathic Touch by Relational Agents , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.

[14]  Abu Saleh Md. Mahfujur Rahman,et al.  Measurements of Multimodal Approach to Haptic Interaction in Second Life Interpersonal Communication System , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

[15]  David C F Vaidis,et al.  Increasing Compliance with a Request: Two Touches are More Effective than One , 2008, Psychological reports.

[16]  Matthew J. Hertenstein,et al.  Nonverbal channel use in communication of emotion: how may depend on why. , 2011, Emotion.

[17]  Francis McGlone,et al.  The development and validation of sensory and emotional scales of touch perception , 2011, Attention, perception & psychophysics.

[18]  Karon E. MacLean,et al.  Communicating emotion through a haptic link: Design space and methodology , 2007, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[19]  Vanessa Evers,et al.  The Evaluation of Empathy, Autonomy and Touch to Inform the Design of an Environmental Monitoring Robot , 2010, ICSR.

[20]  Malin Björnsdotter,et al.  Vicarious Responses to Social Touch in Posterior Insular Cortex Are Tuned to Pleasant Caressing Speeds , 2011, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[21]  Roope Raisamo,et al.  Emotional and behavioral responses to haptic stimulation , 2008, CHI.

[22]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  Virtual Interpersonal Touch: Expressing and Recognizing Emotions Through Haptic Devices , 2007, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[23]  Hiroshi Ishiguro,et al.  Effect of robot's active touch on people's motivation , 2011, 2011 6th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[24]  Adeline Deladisma,et al.  Mixed Reality Humans: Evaluating Behavior, Usability, and Acceptability , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[25]  Hendrik A. H. C. van Veen,et al.  Waypoint navigation with a vibrotactile waist belt , 2005, TAP.

[26]  Daut Daman,et al.  Haptic Vibration for Emotional Expression of Avatar to Enhance the Realism of Virtual Reality , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Computer Technology and Development.

[27]  J. Hampton,et al.  The effect of relationship status on communicating emotions through touch , 2011, Cognition & emotion.

[28]  A. Cranny-Francis.  Semefulness: a social semiotics of touch , 2011 .

[29]  D. Keltner,et al.  The communication of emotion via touch. , 2009, Emotion.

[30]  Karon E. MacLean,et al.  Design and assessment of the Haptic Creature's affect display , 2011, 2011 6th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[31]  Paul Lemmens,et al.  A body-conforming tactile jacket to enrich movie viewing , 2009, World Haptics 2009 - Third Joint EuroHaptics conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems.

[32]  Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn,et al.  The Virtual Midas Touch: Helping Behavior After a Mediated Social Touch , 2009, IEEE Trans. Haptics.

[33]  Karon E. MacLean,et al.  Hapticat: exploration of affective touch , 2005, ICMI '05.

[34]  J. Wessberg,et al.  Pleasantness of touch in human glabrous and hairy skin: Order effects on affective ratings , 2011, Brain Research.

[35]  Dacher Keltner,et al.  Gender and the Communication of Emotion Via Touch , 2010, Sex roles.

[36]  A. Montagu,et al.  Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin , 1971 .

[37]  Henriette Cramer,et al.  ‘Give me a hug’: the effects of touch and autonomy on people's responses to embodied social agents , 2009 .

[38]  Dzmitry Tsetserukou,et al.  Innovative Real-Time Communication System with Rich Emotional and Haptic Channels , 2010, EuroHaptics.

[39]  Rongrong Wang,et al.  Touch & talk: contextualizing remote touch for affective interaction , 2010, TEI '10.

[40]  Junseok Park,et al.  A Tactile Emotional Interface for Instant Messenger Chat , 2007, HCI.

[41]  W. Roth,et al.  Social anxiety and response to touch: incongruence between self-evaluative and physiological reactions , 2001, Biological Psychology.

[42]  Benjamin Lok,et al.  Virtual Human + Tangible Interface = Mixed Reality Human An Initial Exploration with a Virtual Breast Exam Patient , 2008, 2008 IEEE Virtual Reality Conference.