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Stay in touch : design a haptic wearable for social touch

Stork, C.A (2021) Stay in touch : design a haptic wearable for social touch.

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Abstract:Social touch is an essential aspect of humans, as it allows people to communicate their emotions. Social touch has been seen to contribute to the health of the human psyche, allowing people to feel a sense of togetherness. However, social touch for couples in long-distance relationships is difficult because of the physical distance between the couple. This results in a less affective touch, which results in a lack of emotional intimacy in the relationship. A haptic wearable for social, affective touch is a possible solution, as the wearable could mediate affective touch over a long distance. Usually, couples would convey affective touch by giving a light touch like a gentle caress or a hug to their significant other. However, this is not possible if the couple is in a long-distance relationship. Therefore, a haptic wearable that simulates a gentle caress on the user’s forearm is created. The haptic wearable goal is to make users communicate light, gentle caress to their significant other to support emotional intimacy. The first step for this wearable is to connect to an MQTT server. Second, a gentle caress is sensed by one of the users and sends the touch pattern to the MQTT server. Third, the other wearable worn by the other user will receive the touch pattern and reproduce the gentle caress onto the user’s forearm. This bachelor project will use the creative design process to make quick iterations of the prototype. The wearable also goes through an evaluation stage to evaluate the functional and systematic requirements. These requirements will be evaluated by the researcher and the participant from the user case study. Overall, the haptic wearable for social, affective touch showed positive results and met most of the established requirements.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Subject:01 general works, 02 science and culture in general
Programme:Creative Technology BSc (50447)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/87940
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