Re-form : Morphable Technology to Transform Interactions

社交接触（也被称为情感或情感接触）在我们的健康和幸福中起着重要作用。它对我们儿童时期的健康发展是必要的，对我们的生理、行为和感知有着重要的影响，但往往是无意识的。随着现代生活方式越来越多地涉及到人们之间使用短信、电子邮件和视频通话等通信方式进行远距离互动，我们经历了许多无法使用身体接触沟通渠道的互动。研究表明，模拟自然触摸可以引起与真实社交触摸互动相同的情感和生理反应。这支持了一个新兴的概念，即社交触摸的沟通渠道可以通过触觉界面来调节，以增强远距离互动。这样的界面还可以与我们的技术创造更有吸引力和情感的互动，并且正在探索用于虚拟现实，感官增强和远程操作机器人反馈等应用。现有的触觉设备经常使用基于振动的皮肤刺激，因为振动马达便宜且谨慎，但这是一种有限的模式，不能提供我们身体反应的情感触摸感觉的范围。这篇博士论文通过提出一个“感觉工具包”来支持模拟自然/社会触摸的新兴领域；不同形式的自然触觉，如挤压、抚摸和敲击，包括通过触觉刺激和分析我们对这些感觉的情绪反应来模拟这些形式的方法。Sensation Toolkit是一个可穿戴触觉界面的集合，它利用新颖的驱动方法来产生触觉感觉。对每个接口的硬件进行了描述和表征，使接口具有可复制性。通过进行心理测试来了解参与者对界面产生的感觉的情绪反应，对每个界面的性能进行了调查。为了演示如何使用Sensation Toolkit，本文的最后一章提出了一个用例场景：使用Sensation Toolkit中收集和呈现的知识开发的可穿戴触觉设备。该设备的原型和参与者在现实生活场景中进行测试，以探索和评估展开的相互作用。这也是一个研究如何结合Sensation Toolkit的元素来创造更多样化和有意义的互动的机会。

Social touch (also described as affective or emotive touch) plays an important role in our health and well-being. It is necessary for our healthy development as children and has a significant, yet often unconscious, impact on our physiology, behaviour and perception. With modern lifestyles increasingly involving long distance interactions between people using communication methods such as messaging, email and video calls, we experience many interactions where the communication channel of physical touch is not available. Research has shown that simulated natural touch can elicit the same emotional and physiological responses as real social touch interactions. This supports the emerging concept that this communication channel of social touch could be mediated by haptic (touch) interfaces to enhance long distance interactions. Such interfaces can also create more engaging and emotive interactions with our technology and are being explored for use in applications such as virtual reality, sensory augmentation and feedback for remotely operating robots. Existing haptic devices frequently use vibration-based stimulation of the skin since vibration motors are cheap and discreet, but this is a limited modality that does not provide the range of affective touch sensations our bodies respond to. This PhD thesis looks to support the emerging field of simulated natural/social touch by presenting a 'Sensation toolkit'; a library of different forms of natural touch, such as squeezing, stroking and tapping, including methods for simulating these forms via haptic stimulation and analysis of our emotive responses to such sensations. The Sensation Toolkit is a collection of wearable tactile interfaces that utilise novel actuation methods to generate haptic sensations. The hardware of each interface is described and characterised so that the interfaces are replicable. The performance of each interface is investigated by conducting psychometric tests to understand the emotive responses of participants to the sensations generated by the interfaces. To demonstrate how the Sensation Toolkit can be used, the final chapter of this thesis presents a use-case scenario: a wearable haptic device developed using the knowledge collected and presented in the Sensation Toolkit. This device is prototyped and tested with participants in real-life scenarios to explore and assess the interactions that unfold. It is also an opportunity to investigate how combining elements of the Sensation Toolkit can create more diverse and meaningful interactions.