CAREER:The Uncanny Valley in Socially Appropriate Haptic Interactions

社交接触是人类之间一种自然的交流方式，它可以帮助维持人际关系，交流情感，并直接反映个体之间的生理和心理亲密度。随着人们通过电脑进行视频会议、电子邮件和短信交流的时间越来越多，社交接触的重要性变得越来越明显。最近的大流行所要求的保持社交距离准则加剧了这一问题，导致许多人遭受缺乏人情味的负面影响。如果没有面对面交流的深度和微妙，远程交流会增加孤独感和社会孤立感，这可能对身心健康产生重大影响。虽然之前的工作已经创造了显示虚拟社交触摸的触觉设备，但有限的工作已经探索了这些虚拟触摸感觉的可接受性或它们在虚拟社交互动中的作用。本研究的假设是，就像机器人的外观一样，由于用户的期望（人类的社交触摸）和现实（来自设备的触摸）之间的不匹配，存在使用户产生厌恶或反感的触觉感觉，从而产生触觉“恐怖谷”。本研究的目标是探索和定义触觉交互的恐怖谷，特别是当它与定义适当和舒适的虚拟社交触摸相关时。该项目将试图揭示由于用户期望与现实之间的不匹配而导致用户产生厌恶或反感的虚拟触摸实例。通过一系列的人体研究，本研究将在三种场景下定义社交触摸的触觉恐怖谷参数：(1)通过触觉设备进行触摸；(2)虚拟现实触觉和视觉表现；(3)具有人形机器人的触觉和物理体现。该项目将评估执行器、材料、控制模式、视觉输入和物理体现在用户舒适度方面的作用。通过确定社交触摸恐怖谷的存在和参数，该项目将为未来触觉、机器人和虚拟现实领域的社交触摸系统设计提供信息。这项研究的结果将为触觉、人机交互（HCI）和人机交互（HRI）设计师创建物理社会系统创建设计指南，使他们能够避免位于恐怖谷的设计，以创建愉快、沉浸式和社交适当的交互。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Social touch is a natural mode of communication between humans that can help maintain relationships, communicates emotions, and directly reflects physical and psychological closeness between individuals. The importance of social touch is becoming more evident as the time humans spend communicating through computers in videoconferencing, email, and text messaging increases. Social distancing guidelines required by the recent pandemic has exacerbated this issue, leading many individuals to suffer the negative effects of a lack of human touch. Without the depth and subtlety of in-person communication, remote communication causes increased feelings of loneliness and social isolation, which can have a significant impact on mental and physical health. Although prior work has created haptic devices for displaying virtual social touch, limited work has explored the acceptability of these virtual touch sensations or the role they play in virtual social interactions. The hypothesis of this research is that, as in the appearance of robots, there exist haptic sensations that produce a sensation of disgust or revulsion in the user due to a mismatch between the user's expectation (human social touch) and reality (touch from the device), creating a haptic “uncanny valley”. The goal of this research is to explore and define the uncanny valley for haptic interactions, specifically as it relates to defining appropriate and comfortable virtual social touch.This project will seek to uncover instances of virtual touch that produce feelings of disgust or revulsion in users due to a mismatch between the user's expectation and reality. Through a series of human subject studies, this work will define the parameters of the haptic uncanny valley for social touch in a set of three scenarios: (1) touch through haptic devices; (2) touch and visual representation with virtual reality; (3) touch and physical embodiment with a humanoid robot. The project will evaluate actuators, materials, control patterns, visual input, and physical embodiment for their role in the comfort of the user. By determining the existence of and parameters for the uncanny valley for social touch, this project will inform the design of future social touch systems in haptics, robotics, and virtual reality. The outcomes of this research will create design guidelines for haptics, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) designers creating physical social systems, allowing them to avoid designs that lie in the uncanny valley to create interactions that are pleasant, immersive, and socially appropriate.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.