EmotiTactor: Exploring How Designers Approach Emotional Robotic Touch
Ran Zhou, Harpreet Sareen, Yufei Zhang, Daniel Leithinger
DIS'22: ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS)
Session: Multisensory Design
Abstract
In this work, we bring designers into the exploration of emotional robotic touch, discuss their design decisions and reflect on their insights. Prior psychology findings show humans can communicate distinct emotions solely through touch. We hypothesize that similar effects might also be applicable to robotic touch. To enable designers to easily generate and modify various types of affective touch for conveying emotions (e.g., anger, happiness, etc.), we developed a platform consisting of a robotic tactor interface and a software design tool. When conducting an elicitation study with eleven interaction designers, we discovered common patterns in their generated tactile sensations for each emotion. We also illustrate the strategies, metaphors, and reactions that the designers deployed in the design process. Our findings uncover that the “otherness” of robotic touch broadens the design possibilities of emotional communication beyond mimicking interpersonal touch.
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533464
WEB:: https://dis.acm.org/2022/
Video Presentations of DIS 2022