Skip to main content
Log in

On the Role of Affective Properties in Hedonic and Discriminant Haptic Systems

  • Published:
International Journal of Social Robotics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Common haptic devices are designed to effectively provide kinaesthetic and/or cutaneous discriminative inputs to the users by modulating some physical parameters. However, in addition to this behavior, haptic stimuli were proven to convey also affective inputs to the brain. Nevertheless, such affective properties of touch are often disregarded in the design (and consequent validation) of haptic displays. In this paper we present some preliminary experimental evidences about how emotional feelings, intrinsically present while interacting with tactile displays, can be assessed. We propose a methodology based on a bidimensional model of elicited emotions evaluated by means of simple psychometric tests and statistical inference. Specifically, affective dimensions are expressed in terms of arousal and valence, which are quantified through two simple one-question psychometric tests, whereas statistical inference is based on rank-based non-parametric tests. In this work we consider two types of haptic systems: (i) a softness display, FYD-2, which was designed to convey purely discriminative softness haptic stimuli and (ii) a system designed to convey affective caress-like stimuli (by regulating the velocity and the strength of the “caress”) on the user forearm. Gender differences were also considered. In both devices, the affective component clearly depends on the stimuli and it is gender-related. Finally, we discuss how such outcomes might be profitably used to guide the design and the usage of haptic devices, in order to take into account also the emotional component, thus improving system performance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Hertenstein MJ (2002) Touch: its communicative functions in infancy. Hum Dev 45(2):70–94

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Mountcastle VB (2005) The sensory hand: neural mechanisms of somatic sensation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  3. McGlone F, Wessberg J, Olausson H (2014) Discriminative and affective touch: sensing and feeling. Neuron 82(4):737–755

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Fairhurst MT, Löken L, Grossmann T (2014) Physiological and behavioral responses reveal 9-month-old infants sensitivity to pleasant touch. Psychological Sci 25(5):1124–1131

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Hertenstein MJ, Keltner D, App B, Bulleit BA, Jaskolka AR (2006) Touch communicates distinct emotions. Emotion 6(3):528

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Stiehl WD, Lieberman J, Breazeal C, Basel L, Lalla L, and Wolf M (2005) “Design of a therapeutic robotic companion for relational, affective touch. In: Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005. ROMAN 2005. IEEE international workshop on. IEEE, pp. 408–415

  7. Rolls ET (2010) The affective and cognitive processing of touch, oral texture, and temperature in the brain. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 34(2):237–245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Yohanan S, Hall J, MacLean K, Croft E, der Loos MBMV, Chang J, Nielsen D, Zoghbi S (2009) Affect-driven emotional expression with the haptic creature. In Proceedings of UIST, User Interface Software and Technology

  9. Klöcker A, Oddo CM, Camboni D, Penta M, Thonnard J-L (2014) Physical factors influencing pleasant touch during passive fingertip stimulation. PloS One 9(7):e101361

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Essick GK, McGlone F, Dancer C, Fabricant D, Ragin Y (2010) Quantitative assessment of pleasant touch. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 34(2):192–203

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. May AC, Stewart JL, Tapert SF, Paulus MP (2014) The effect of age on neural processing of pleasant soft touch stimuli. Front Behav Neurosci 8:52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Tsetserukou D (2010) Haptihug: a novel haptic display for communication of hug over a distance. Eurohaptics Conf 2010:340–347

    Google Scholar 

  13. Bianchi M, Valenza G, Serio A, Lanata A, Greco A, Nardelli M, Scilingo E, Bicchi A (2014) Design and preliminary affective characterization of a novel fabric-based tactile display. In: Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS), 2014 IEEE, pp 591–596

  14. Yohanan S, MacLean K (2011) Design and assessment of the haptic creature’s affect display. In: In HRI ’11 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Human-robot interaction, pp 473–480

  15. Yohanan S, MacLean KE (2012) The role of affective touch in human-robot interaction: human intent and expectations in touching the haptic creature. Int J Social Robot 4(2):163–180

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Gatti E, Caruso G, Bordegoni M, Spence C (2013) Can the feel of the haptic interaction modify a user’s emotional state? In Proceedings of World Haptics, pp 247–252

  17. Moyle W, Jones C, Sung B, Bramble M, O’Dwyer S, Blumenstein M, Estivill-Castro V (2015) What effect does an animal robot called cuddler have on the engagement and emotional response of older people with dementia? a pilot feasibility study. Int J Soc Robot 8(1):145–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Shiomi M, Nakagawa K, Shinozawa K, Matsumura R, Ishiguro H, Hagita N (2016) Does a robot’s touch encourage human effort? Int J Soc Robot, pp 1–11

  19. Silvera-Tawil D, Rye D, Velonaki M (2014) Interpretation of social touch on an artificial arm covered with an eit-based sensitive skin. Int J Soc Robot 6(4):489–505

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Posner J, Russell J, Peterson B (2005) The circumplex model of affect: an integrative approach to affective neuroscience, cognitive development, and psychopathology. Dev Psychopathol 17(03):715–734

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Bianchi M, Serio A (2015) Design and characterization of a fabric-based softness display. IEEE Trans Haptics 8(2):152–163

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Serio A, Bianchi M, Bicchi A (2013) A device for mimicking the contact force/contact area relationship of different materials with applications to softness rendering. In Intelligent robots and systems (IROS), 2013 IEEE/RSJ international conference on Nov 2013, pp. 4484–4490

  23. Calvo RA, D’Mello S, Gratch J, Kappas A (2014) The oxford handbook of affective computing. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  24. Russell JA (1980) A circumplex model of affect. J Personal Soc Psychol 39(6):1161

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Bradley MM, Lang PJ (1994) Measuring emotion: the self-assessment manikin and the semantic differential. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry 25(1):49–59

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Valenza G, Citi L, Gentili C, Lanata A, Scilingo EP, Barbieri R (2015) Characterization of depressive states in bipolar patients using wearable textile technology and instantaneous heart rate variability assessment. IEEE J Biomed Health Inform 19(1):263–274

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Valenza G, Lanat A (2012) Oscillation of heart rate and respiration synchronize during affective visual elicitation. IEEE Trans Inform Technol Biomed 16:683–690

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Lanata A, Valenza G, Scilingo EP (2013) Eye gaze patterns in emotional pictures. J Ambient Intell Humaniz Comput 4(6):705–715 Springer

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Samadani A-A, Kubica E, Gorbet R, Kulić D (2013) Perception and generation of affective hand movements. Int J Soc Robot 5(1):35–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Novikova J, Watts L (2015) Towards artificial emotions to assist social coordination in hri. Int J Soc Robot 7(1):77–88

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Bicchi A, De Rossi DE, Scilingo EP (2000) The role of the contact area spread rate in haptic discrimination of softness. IEEE Trans Robot Autom 16(5):496–504

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Bianchi M, Scilingo EP, Serio A, Bicchi A (2009) A new softness display based on bi-elastic fabric. In: World Haptics Conference, pp 382–383

  33. Bianchi M, Serio A, Scilingo EP, Bicchi A (2010) A new fabric-based softness display. In Proceedings IEEE Haptics symposium, pp 105–112

  34. Löken LS, Wessberg J, McGlone F, Olausson H (2009) Coding of pleasant touch by unmyelinated afferents in humans. Nat Neurosci 12(5):547–548

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Essick GK, McGlone F, Dancer C, Fabricant D, Ragin Y, Phillips N, Jones T, Guest S (2010) Quantitative assessment of pleasant touch. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 34(2):192–203

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Löken LS, Evert M, Wessberg J (2011) Pleasantness of touch in human glabrous and hairy skin: order effects on affective ratings. Brain Res 1417:9–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Taylor SE, Klein LC, Lewis BP, Gruenewald TL, Gurung RA, Updegraff JA (2000) Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight. Psychol Rev 107(3):411

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Huikuri HV, Pikkuja SM, Airaksinen KJ, Ika MJ, Rantala AO, Kauma H, Lilja M, Kesa YA et al (1996) Sex-related differences in autonomic modulation of heart rate in middle-aged subjects. Circulation 94(2):122–125

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Kuo TB, Lin T, Yang CC, Li C-L, Chen C-F, Chou P (1999) Effect of aging on gender differences in neural control of heart rate. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 277(6):H2233–H2239

    Google Scholar 

  40. Wong SW, Kimmerly DS, Massé N, Menon RS, Cechetto DF, Shoemaker JK (2007) Sex differences in forebrain and cardiovagal responses at the onset of isometric handgrip exercise: a retrospective fmri study. J Appl Physiol 103(4):1402–1411

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Nugent AC, Bain EE, Thayer JF, Sollers JJ, Drevets WC (2011) Sex differences in the neural correlates of autonomic arousal: a pilot pet study. Int J Psychophysiol 80(3):182–191

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Breazeal C, Takanishi A, Kobayashi T (2008) Social robots that interact with people. In: Siciliano B, Khatib O (eds) Springer handbook of robotics. Springer, Berlin, pp 1349–1369

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work is supported in part by the European Research Council under the Advanced Grant “ SoftHands: A Theory of Soft Synergies for a New Generation of Artificial Hands” (No. ERC-291166) and by the EU FP7 project (No. 601165) “WEARable HAPtics for Humans and Robots (WEARHAP)”.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matteo Bianchi.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bianchi, M., Valenza, G., Lanata, A. et al. On the Role of Affective Properties in Hedonic and Discriminant Haptic Systems. Int J of Soc Robotics 9, 87–95 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-016-0371-x

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-016-0371-x

Keywords

Navigation