Although before-touch situations are essential to achieve natural touch interactions between people and robots, they receive less attention than after-touch situations. This study reports pre-touch reaction distance analysis results around touchable upper body parts, i.e., shoulders, elbows, hands, based on human–human interaction. We also analyzed the effects of gender, approach side, speed, a...

Most animals can distinguish two distinct types of touch stimuli: gentle (innocuous) and harsh (noxious/painful) touch, however, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Caenorhabditis elegans is a useful model for the study of gentle touch sensation. However, little is known about harsh touch sensation in this organism. Here we characterize harsh touch sensation in C. elegans. We sho...

As robotic platforms are designed for human robot interaction applications, a full body sense of touch, or “sensitive skin,” becomes important. The Huggable is a new type of therapeutic robotic companion based upon relational touch interactions. The initial use of neural networks to classify the affective content of touch is described.

Abstract Previous studies have highlighted that affective touch delivered at slow velocities (1–10 cm/s) enhances body-part embodiment during multisensory illusions, yet its role towards whole-body is less established. Across two experiments, we investigated the of subjective a whole mannequin body within full illusion, amongst healthy females. Participants perceived to be more pleasant than no...