Findings from a recent University of Sussex study suggest human emotion can be relayed through the air, using ultrasound technology that simulates touch.The study is the first to demonstrate there is consistent mapping between emotion and haptics, or touch, said Marianna Obrist, a lecturer at the university's Department of Informatics and the main researcher on the project."Our findings show that people are able to communicate emotions through mid-air haptics," she told Motherboard by email. She said researchers were surprised to discover the parameters and directions of touch were consistently linked to different emotions.
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For example, the study found a short vertical movement starting at the thumb and moving towards the middle of the palm or wrist was linked to excitement and positive emotions. Conversely, slowly directing touch away from the palm and towards the fingers was associated with negative emotions."This is the first study we are aware of that explicitly looks at how emotions are mediated through touch," said Sriram Subramanian, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Bristol who assisted in the research.Although this study is technically the first of its kind, research in the past has shown how emotion can be conveyed through touch, including through haptic machines. One study from Stanford University showed participants were able to identify the seven emotions (surprise, fear, disgust, anger, joy, and sadness) through a handshake with a robotic joystick."Our findings demonstrated that people were indeed able to recognize the emotions expressed via the virtual handshake machine with accuracy approximately twice what would be expected by chance, though they were not as accurate as the physical hand-to-hand shake," Jeremy Bailenson, a researcher on the Stanford study told Motherboard by email.
For the Sussex study, researchers had three independent groups of participants work with UltraHaptics, a system that enables the sensation of touch in mid-air. The machine works by focusing air pressure waves on users' hands through ultrasound transducers, projecting creating the sensation of touch onto the hands without the use gloves or attachments.
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The first group created 20 touch patterns using the machine in response to five images, which came from an established emotion database called the International Affective Picture System database.The images included one of a calm naturescape with trees, one of white-water rafting, one of a car in flames, one of a graveyard and another of a wall clock.The second group refined the touh reactions the first group created down from four per image to two per image, making 10 total. Participants in the third group experienced all 10 touch sensations and matched them to the images, with no knowledge of how the sensations were created.
The ratings from the last group "matched strongly" the images from the first group, Subramanian said, suggesting the first group had successfully communicated with the third."The findings are quite extraordinary from my perspective," he said. "This shows to us that it is possible to design emotions through haptics."Following the study, Obrist was awarded £1 million, or almost $1.5 million, to pursue a five-year project expanding the research into smell and touch. Through the project, called SenseX, she hopes to create a foundation for others to design technological innovations."All that we now know is that there is a consistent emotional mapping but we still haven't found that mapping," Subramanian said. "In the future we want to explore these findings further."The technology has a variety of application opportunities, Obrist said, including opening up new ways of communication for deaf and blind people."It could [be applied] either for one-to-one interactions, such as a discrete tactile system between a couple or friends using, for instance, wearable technology, or it could be used for one to many interactions, where we can create tactile sensations for many such as in a cinema to create more immersive viewing experiences," she said.
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The ratings from the last group "matched strongly" the images from the first group, Subramanian said, suggesting the first group had successfully communicated with the third."The findings are quite extraordinary from my perspective," he said. "This shows to us that it is possible to design emotions through haptics."Following the study, Obrist was awarded £1 million, or almost $1.5 million, to pursue a five-year project expanding the research into smell and touch. Through the project, called SenseX, she hopes to create a foundation for others to design technological innovations."All that we now know is that there is a consistent emotional mapping but we still haven't found that mapping," Subramanian said. "In the future we want to explore these findings further."The technology has a variety of application opportunities, Obrist said, including opening up new ways of communication for deaf and blind people."It could [be applied] either for one-to-one interactions, such as a discrete tactile system between a couple or friends using, for instance, wearable technology, or it could be used for one to many interactions, where we can create tactile sensations for many such as in a cinema to create more immersive viewing experiences," she said.