This project explores affective social touch wearables using pneumatic and vibrotactile actuation on across the body to communicate a range of haptic sensations. The ultimate vision is to recreate affective touch digitally.

In our prior work “MobiTouch” (MUM 2024), we developed a wearable haptic device that integrates pneumatic and vibrotactile technologies to enhance touch sensations. The system addresses the slow responsiveness of small pneumatic components by compensating with vibrations, allowing for more diverse touch patterns. However, it remains unclear what the expressive capacity of these touch patterns are, and how well they communicate affective touch features to a recipient.

This thesis explores the affective touch design space for wearable, multi-haptic systems, from creation to sensation.

You will:

• Be handed the existing prototype to improve on the technical capabilities of the MobiTouch system so that a user can create and experience richer haptic sensations
• You will help​ reduce the size of the prototype, enabling further customizability, minimizing negative externalities such as noise, heat, etc.
• Consider combining an additional modality (e.g., thermal feedback) to create richer, more realistic affective touch sensations
• Create a user interface that enables users to easily create and record new multi-modal touch sensations
• Explore where on the body would be optimal to create and reexperience touch sensations
• Conduct a controlled user study to evaluate whether the created touch sensations can be accurately identified in terms of valence, arousal, and semantic meaning

You need:

• Good programming skills (Unity is a plus), including hardware prototyping (Arduino)
• Experience with haptic feedback and devices
• Curiosity for embodied, haptic interactions and unusual ways of interacting with technology
• Motivation to work independently on a creative and technically challenging project

Please contact Abdallah El Ali for this Thesis.