Re-form : Morphable Technology to Transform Interactions

社交接触(也被描述为情感接触)对我们的健康和幸福起着重要的作用。它对我们儿童时期的健康发展是必要的，并对我们的生理、行为和感知产生重大的、但往往是无意识的影响。随着现代生活方式越来越多地涉及使用消息、电子邮件和视频通话等通信方法进行人与人之间的远距离交互，我们经历了许多无法使用物理触摸的通信渠道的交互。研究表明，模拟的自然触摸可以引发与真实社交触摸互动相同的情感和生理反应。这支持了一种新兴的概念，即这种社交触摸的交流渠道可以通过触觉(触摸)界面来中介，以加强远距离互动。这类界面还可以与我们的技术创建更吸引人和更情绪化的互动，并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，因为振动马达既便宜又谨慎，但这是一种有限的模式，不能提供我们身体所能响应的一系列情感触摸感觉。这篇博士论文旨在支持模拟自然/社交触摸这一新兴领域，提出了一种“感觉工具包”；这是一个不同形式的自然触摸的资料库，如挤压、抚摸和敲击，包括通过触觉刺激模拟这些形式的方法，以及分析我们对这些感觉的情感反应。Sensation工具包是一组可穿戴的触觉界面，利用新颖的驱动方法来产生触觉感觉。描述了每个接口的硬件并对其进行了表征，使得接口是可复制的。通过进行心理测量测试来调查每个界面的性能，以了解参与者对界面产生的感觉的情绪反应。为了演示如何使用Sensation工具包，本论文的最后一章提供了一个用例场景：使用Sensation工具包中收集和呈现的知识开发的可穿戴触觉设备。该设备是原型，并在现实生活场景中与参与者进行测试，以探索和评估展开的互动。这也是一个机会，研究如何结合Sensation工具包的元素可以创建更多样化和更有意义的互动。

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.