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Int. J. Human–Computer Studies 166 (2022) 102881
Available online 18 June 2022
1071-5819/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Interpersonal Haptic Communication: Review and Directions for the Future
Roope Raisamo
a
,
*
, Katri Salminen
b
, Jussi Rantala
a
, Ahmed Farooq
a
, Mounia Ziat
c
a
TAUCHI Research Center, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
b
School of Industrial Engineering, Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Tampere, Finland
c
Information Design and Corporate Communication, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
interpersonal communication
haptic communication
affective haptics
mediated social touch
multimodal interaction
haptic perception
ABSTRACT
Touch between people is an integral part of human life. Touch is used to convey information, emotions, and other
social cues. Still, everyday remote communication remains mainly auditive or audio-visual. The theme of this
article, interpersonal haptic communication, refers to any communication system that supports mediation of
touch between two or more persons. We rst present a scoping review of the state of the art in interpersonal
haptic communication, including physiological and psychological basis of touch, affective and social touch, and
mediated social touch. We then discuss emerging research themes that shape the future of interpersonal haptic
communication, identify research gaps and propose key research directions for each theme. Finally, societal
impact and ethical aspects are discussed.
Introduction
Touch has an important role in social communication, regulating
physiological states and biological and social development (Montagu,
1972). Hertenstein et al. (2006) state that because of its importance in
early life, touch may establish the foundation of all other forms of
human communication. Even though the frequency of touch contact
decreases after childhood, interpersonal touch is equally important in
adulthood (Jones & Yarbrough, 1985). Touch can have common
meanings between cultures, and fundamental uses include communi-
cation of comfort, attachment, and aggression (Hertenstein et al., 2006).
The role of touch in everyday non-remote communication between
people (Gallace and Spence, 2010) is not supported in remote commu-
nication. Haptic communication systems can be divided into two broad
categories based on the type of information communicated:
task-oriented or affective. The bulk of research has focused on
task-oriented, non-affective communication. For instance, it is possible
to send haptic guidance cues to a person walking towards a point of
interest (Scheggi et al., 2014) or convey information of person’s pres-
ence (Lenay et al., 2011). Task-oriented information can be communi-
cated by using Tactons (Brewster and Brown, 2001; Hoggan et al., 2009)
or systems like Tactile Braille (Rantala et al., 2009; Rantala et al.,
2013a).
This article is focused on interpersonal haptic communication, with a
specic emphasis on affective touch. With interpersonal haptic
communication, we refer to any communication system that supports
mediation of touch between two or more persons. The scoping review
was prepared as follows. First, we collected an extensive set of all studies
from the most relevant elds in interpersonal communication. Amongst
the chosen elds were physiology of the skin, human emotions, the role
of touch in social communication, haptic technologies, social commu-
nication, multimodal technologies, human perception, psychology and
computer-mediated haptics. We rst identied potentially interesting
and relevant peer-reviewed publications (i.e., journal articles and con-
ference papers) in English. The searches were carried out in ACM Digital
Library, IEEE Xplore, MDPI, Elsevier, Scopus and Google Scholar data-
bases. We also used the reference lists and lists of papers referring to
chosen studies of all selected papers and articles to nd additional
relevant papers. After an analysis of words contained in the title, ab-
stract, or index terms, we selected potentially interesting papers. The
papers were retained only if they contained information related to
interpersonal haptics or the scientic background (e.g., physiology of
the skin) important to design haptics.
This article is structured as follows: After the introduction in Section
1, we present the sense of touch in Section 2, focusing on discriminative
and affective touch. Section 3 contains a concise summary of haptic
technologies. Mediated social touch and its applications are presented in
Section 4. Section 5 contains the discussion, starting with emerging
themes for the future, followed by societal impact and ethical consid-
erations. Finally, Section 6 concludes the article.
* Corresponding author
E-mail address: roope.raisamo@tuni. (R. Raisamo).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Human - Computer Studies
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhcs
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2022.102881
Received 20 October 2021; Received in revised form 16 June 2022; Accepted 17 June 2022
International Journal of Human - Computer Studies 166 (2022) 102881
2
Physiological basis of touch
To understand interpersonal touch, it is important to separate
discriminative touch and emotional touch (McGlone et al., 2007). We
rely on discriminative touch when manipulating objects or exploring our
surroundings. Emotional touch is mediated by a different system that
gets activated via a range of haptic social interactions such as grooming
and nurturing (McGlone, 2007). In the next sections, we provide concise
overviews of both discriminative and emotional touch with focus on the
latter.
Discriminative touch
When we use tools or interact with objects, discriminative touch is
activated. During discriminative touch, humans typically touch surfaces
and objects with the glabrous (i.e., non-hairy) ngertips and palms.
While there are up to 12 classes of afferent bers in the glabrous skin
(Johnson et al., 2000), the afferents mainly responsible for discrimina-
tive sensibility are four mechanoreceptive afferents: Merkel receptors,
Meissner corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles, and Rufni endings (Gold-
stein, 1999). These receptors respond to different types of touch stimuli:
Merkel receptors sense low frequency pushing against the skin (Gold-
stein, 1999) via the mechanosensitive Piezo2 channel (Woo et al., 2014).
Meissner corpuscles detect stimuli such as taps on the skin and small
bumps or ridges on surfaces (Goldstein, 1999). Pacinian corpuscles sense
poorly localized high-frequency vibration such as the hum of an electric
motor and frictional displacement of skin when moving one’s hand
across an object (McGlone, 2007). Rufni endings sense stretching of
skin and movement of joints. In addition, thermoreceptors, chemore-
ceptors, and nociceptors also have specic roles in sensing touch.
Thermoreceptors sense temperature such as feelings of cold and warmth
(Darian-Smith & Johnson, 1977). Direct chemoreceptors react to
chemical stimuli through taste buds in the tongue (Chandrashekar et al.,
2006). Nociceptors respond to stimuli that can cause tissue damage and
be perceived as painful (Scholz & Woolf, 2002).
Emotional touch
A distinction worth mentioning is between the terms affect and
emotion. Affect refers to the basic sense of feeling, often measured with
two or three dimensions (valence: how pleasant or unpleasant one feels,
arousal: how calm or agitated one feels, and dominance: how controlled
or under control one feels). Emotions are the result of conscious cognitive
behavior such as reecting, weighing up the odds (Barrett, 2017).
Emotions are more complex and constructed over time while affects are
punctual demonstrations that one feels, and might not be aware of them.
Affects are strongly related to visceral feeling and interoception, sensory
perception from inside the body. The terms emotional touch and affective
touch have been interchangeably used by the research community
(McGlone et al., 2014).
The processing of affective touch begins at the skin level (McGlone
et al., 2007; Morrison et al., 2011b). The anatomy of the skin and touch
sensations varies between glabrous and non-glabrous sites of the human
body (e.g., Olausson et al., 2008; McGlone & Reilly, 2010). The skin is a
network of thin, slow-conducting afferent (C and Aδ) bers which
transmit information. Traditionally, mechanoreception was attributed
exclusively to thick, fast-conducting (Aβ) afferents. Recent evidence,
however, notes that C-tactile (CT) afferents present at non-glabrous
body sites comprise a second anatomically and functionally distinct
system signaling touch in humans (Bj¨
ornsdotter et al., 2010). These
unmyelinated, slow-conducting CT afferents are strongly associated
with coding the emotional properties of pain, itch or tickle, and
roughness and pleasantness sensations (Vallbo et al., 1996; Pawling
et al., 2017; Sailer et al., 2020). Two important factors affecting CT af-
ferents are the force and velocity of the stimulus. Overall, soft, slow, and
short velocity movements tend to evoke more pleasant experiences than
hard strokes (Sailer and Ackerley, 2019), and rough surfaces or fast
velocity are experienced as less pleasant than smooth ones (Tsalamal
et al., 2018; Greco et al., 2019). The density of the CT afferents varies
between individuals and, therefore, affects the experienced pleasantness
of tactile stimulation (Morrison et al., 2011b).
In addition, even though CT afferents are argued to be most promi-
nent in non-glabrous body sites, recent evidence supports the existence
of sparse amount of such afferents in the palm area (e.g., Watkins et al.,
2021) supporting the ability to promote affective and emotional re-
actions when glabrous body sites are stimulated. Evoking painful or
pleasurable tactile experiences on glabrous skin is also not excluded (e.
g., Essick et al., 2010). However, touch is often perceived as more
pleasant in non-glabrous than glabrous body sites (e.g., Ackerley et al.,
2014).
Among the factors that affect the perceived pleasantness in glabrous
skin are roughness, force, and temperature (Kl¨
ocker et al., 2014). The
texture of the surface affects the rated pleasantness in both non-glabrous
and glabrous body sites (e.g., Ackerley et al., 2014). The forearm is more
susceptible to hardness of a stroke than the palm, providing additional
evidence about the role of CT afferents as mediators of pleasant touch
(Yu et al., 2019). The pleasantness rating of brush stroking gestures is
higher when the stroking velocity is suitable for activating CT afferents
(e.g., 3m/s) in comparison to other velocities (L¨
oken et al., 2009) and
prior exposures affect the ratings of both CT and non-CT touch (Sailer
and Ackerley, 2019; Yokosaka et al., 2020). People who are touched
rarely do not rate CT touch as pleasant compared to people who are
touched regularly (Sailer & Ackerley, 2019). The pleasantness rating of
tactile surfaces is also affected by nger movement velocity and force
during object manipulation. People switch touch behavior depending on
the manipulated object, e.g., pushing motions with unpleasant and
gestures with pleasant objects (Yokosaka et al. 2020).
Temperature and wetness sensations are also associated with the
functionality of the pain – pleasantness system. The thermal subsystem
consists of warm and cold receptors. Warm receptors re to temperature
increases up to 45◦C (Stevens, 1991) with higher temperatures often
activating the sensation of pain (e.g., Heller and Schiff, 1991). There is a
tendency to rate warm stimulation under the pain threshold as pleasant
(e.g., Sung et al., 2007; Salminen et al., 2011; Salminen et al., 2013).
Sticky, cold, or wet textures temperatures are, on the other hand, often
perceived as disgusting (e.g., Kanosue et al., 2002; Saluja & Stevenson,
2019).
Affective communication through haptic technologies
Replicating the feel of real human touch contact is challenging. Even
though current technology is not sophisticated enough to mimic all the
qualities of real touch such as pressure, grip, dryness, and texture,
different haptic technologies can simulate it (e.g., Huisman, 2016; Si-
mons et al., 2020). In this Section, we present the technologies that have
been used to produce touch stimulation for interpersonal
communication.
Vibrotactile
Vibrotactile stimulation is based on an eccentric rotating mass, voice
coils, solenoids, piezoelectric elements, electroactive polymers, or other
related technologies (Choi and Kuchenbecker, 2013). The advantages of
vibrotactile actuators include simple and inexpensive technology as well
as easy control. The actuators are typically either embedded in a
portable device (e.g., Dobson et al., 2001; Rantala et al., 2011; Fur-
ukawa et al., 2012; Hoggan et al., 2012) or attached to a wearable (e.g.,
Cabibihan & Chauhan, 2017; Huisman et al., 2013). The vibration can
be localized so that only a specic area of the skin is stimulated, or it can
be generalized so that an entire device vibrates. The downside is that
vibrotactile actuators have limited expressiveness as vibration of the
skin is only one of the qualities of interpersonal touch. Nevertheless,
R. Raisamo et al.
International Journal of Human - Computer Studies 166 (2022) 102881
3
even a degraded touch cue based on vibration can be perceived as a
stroking gesture and resemble real touch (Huisman, 2016; Rantala et al.,
2013b). Taxonomies of emotional terms associated with vibrotactile
stimuli have been made available to help haptic designers identify more
efcient vibrotactile emotional signatures (Sei et al., 2015; Sei et al.,
2018).
Thermal
The most typical approach to temperature is to use Peltier elements
that create a temperature difference at the junctions of two dissimilar
conductors when a DC current passes through. Depending on the di-
rection of the used current, one side of the Peltier cools and the other
side heats (Jones & Ho, 2008). This makes it possible to create both
warming and cooling sensations. Heating elements have been attached,
for example, to a belt (Gooch & Watts, 2010), model of a hand (Gooch &
Watts, 2012), bracelet (Suhonen et al., 2012) and mobile phone (Wilson
et al., 2011). Challenges in using temperature variations include the
limited range of different sensations, spatial and temporal sensitivity
(Jones & Ho, 2008), and high-power consumption. Due to the poor
spatial sensitivity, dense arrays of thermal actuators rarely provide
benet. Additionally, the temporal modulation of the temperature re-
quires a few seconds to feel the variation. The amount of information
that can be communicated with thermal actuators is lower than with
vibrotactile actuators.
Force
Force feedback devices can stimulate the muscles, joints, and ten-
dons. Typically, these devices are used for exerting forces on the torso or
limbs. In interpersonal haptic communication scenarios, force feedback
can be used in diverse ways when stimulating only the skin is not suf-
cient. A vest or a jacket can apply pressure around the upper torso to
mimic a hug (Teh et al., 2012; Tsetserukou, 2010). Additional devices
have emerged such as armbands for creating a squeezing sensation on
the upper arm (Wang et al., 2012), robotic hand for mediated hand-
shaking (Nakanishi et al., 2014), rotating rollers for playful interaction
(Brave & Dahley, 1997), and haptic knobs for communicating emotions
(Smith & MacLean, 2007).
Contactless
Contactless alternatives are valuable especially in virtual and
augmented reality applications, where requiring the user to touch or
wear a physical device impedes natural user interaction (Sodhi et al.,
2013), or decreases immersion (Rakkolainen et al., 2021). One approach
to create contactless mid-air stimulation is to use controlled air streams
that exert pressure again the skin. This can be achieved by using fans or
pressurized air jets (Suzuki et al., 2005). Another approach is to use air
vortex rings that transfer pressure to the skin or clothes upon contact
(Sodhi et al., 2013). The most current contactless technology is based on
the use of ultrasound (Carter et al., 2013; Iwamoto et al., 2008). With
ultrasound, it is possible to exert pressure on multiple points on the skin
(Rakkolainen et al., 2021). Users generally perceive ultrasound stimu-
lation as vibration (Hoshi et al., 2010), but often these sensations have
been described as ow of water, wind, or electricity (Obrist et al., 2013).
A database of galvanic skin response (GSR) with self-assessment ratings
evaluating ten mid-air stimuli has been made available to researchers
investigating human emotional reaction and automatic emotion recog-
nition (Gatti et al., 2018).
Mediated social touch
The focus of this section is on affective, social distal touch. We rst
discuss the role of social touch in human communication. Next, medi-
ated social touch is dened. Finally, we present a summary of research in
mediated affective and social touch.
Social touch
Social touch is often affectionate, promoting relational, psychologi-
cal, and physical wellbeing by reducing stress (Jakubiak and Feeney,
2017). Besides stress reduction (Morrison, 2016), interpersonal touch
can also decrease conicts (Murphy et al., 2018), elevate relational
well-being (Jakubiak and Feeney, 2019) and activate the neurocognitive
processes underlying goal-directed behavior (Saunders et al., 2018). A
detailed list of different responses associated with social touch in
different age groups can be found in Field (2019).
Tactile behaviors and responses to touching are greatly affected by
culture, gender, social closeness, and personality traits such as self-
esteem (e.g., Hertenstein & Keltner, 2011; Gallace & Spence, 2010).
Interpersonal tactile communication can trigger anxiety in people
suffering from it (Wilhelm et al., 2001) while those with a higher need
for interpersonal touch show an increased level of condence after being
touched (Nuszbaum et al., 2014). People adjust the degree of touch
based on sympathy experienced towards the individual being touched
(Strauss et al., 2020). Some people are touch avoidant (Johansson,
2013) such as individuals with autistic traits (Voos et al., 2013). Further,
motives to touch another person reect the well-being of the social
relationship in question (Jakubiak et al., 2020).
The basic elements of social touch overlap with emotional touch.
Skin is a social organ and interpersonal, skin-to-skin touch can be
perceived as highly pleasurable (Morrison et al., 2010). Touching and
sensing another person’s skin is more pleasant than one’s own skin
(Guest et al., 2009). The pleasant experiences related to social touch can
be evoked visually, by seeing caressing gestures (Morrison et al., 2011a).
Research on social tactile gestures and their responses has a long
tradition. Jones and Yarbrough (1985) showed distinct meanings of
touch in communicating, for example, positive emotions (i.e., support,
appreciation, inclusion, sexual interest, and affection) or controlled
touches (i.e., compliance, attention-getting). Gestures like squeezing
and patting are associated with playfulness and stroking with sexual
desire (Nguyen et al., 1975). Some tactile expressions have later been
successfully associated with several emotions like anger, fear, or sym-
pathy (Hertenstein et al., 2006), including simple social gestures like
grooming (McGlone et al., 2016).
One important factor in pleasant touch is the human factor. Pleasant
experiences evoked by an object are not as strong as those evoked by
another human being (Wijaya et al., 2020). This aspect is not only
important but also challenging in the design of haptic communication
technology. The human aspect between touch and emotions needs to be
fully understood to mimic, partially or fully, human-to-human touch
using haptic communication technology; a sensation generated by a
device would affect the user differently from a sensation received by a
fellow human.
Denition of mediated social touch
A central concept in this eld is mediated social touch, which has
been dened as “the ability of one actor to touch another actor over a
distance by means of tactile or kinesthetic feedback technology” (Haans
& IJsselsteijn, 2006). Recently, several researchers have expressed their
concern over the fact that the use of social touch has decreased in daily
life over the course of the last 20 years and suggest that mediated haptics
could help to overcome this issue (Jewitt et al. 2021).
Research has shown that mediated social touch can modulate phys-
iological responses, increase trust and affection, help establish bonds
between humans, and initiate pro-social behavior (Van Erp & Toet,
2015). In general, humans use, experience, and react to mediated social
touch similarly to direct touch (Bailenson & Yee, 2007). Mediated touch
can lower the heart rate of participants after they watch a sad video clip
(Cabibihan, 2017). It can also increase sympathy and intimacy towards
R. Raisamo et al.
International Journal of Human - Computer Studies 166 (2022) 102881
4
the communication partner when watching a movie together in remote
locations (Takahashi et al., 2011). During a remote storytelling experi-
ment, mediated touch increased the sense of connectedness (Wang et al.,
2012). Finally, mediated touch can increase pro-social, altruistic
behavior, and willingness to comply with a request (Haans & IJssel-
steijn, 2009). Thus, virtual touch can be processed like direct touch
(Haans et al., 2014). These encouraging ndings from different social
contexts support the development of remote haptics.
Examples of mediated affective and social touch
Affective haptics (Tsetserukou et al., 2009) is dened as a eld that
studies and designs haptic systems capable of eliciting, enhancing, or
inuencing human emotions. The eld integrates affective computing,
haptic technology, and user experience (Eid & Osman, 2015). However,
up to date the design of most haptic interfaces has focused on discrim-
inative touch while potential affective qualities have been neglected
(Bianchi et al., 2017). Only recently, the affective qualities of haptics
have been integrated as a part of interface design, with varying success
(Schneider et al., 2017).
In the following subsections, we discuss affective responses to haptic
stimulation and provide insight on the use of haptics to evoke emotions
in remote, social communication settings. Most often, affective qualities
or dimensions of mediated social touch are measured using the pleasure-
arousal-dominance (PAD) emotional state model by Mehrabian and
Russell (1974). PAD consists of the dimensions of valence (i.e., from
unpleasant to pleasant), arousal (i.e., from calm or relaxed to aroused)
which is related to the motivational system of humans, namely acti-
vating appetitive and defensing systems (Bradley & Lang, 2000), and
dominance. Dominance is less explored in haptics research, but it is
equally important from the perspective of the current article since it is
related to the social context (Bradley & Lang, 1994).
Affective responses to haptic stimulation
Most of the previous research that explored affective responses to
haptic stimulation did not include a specic communicational context
but pre-programmed or device-initiated haptic output. Vibrotactile ac-
tuators have been integrated in hand-held devices or wearables for
pleasant sensations (Sei & Maclean, 2013; Yoo et al., 2015; Chandra
et al., 2018) or to mimic touch gestures tickling and stroking (Knoop &
Rossiter, 2015). The timing of the vibrotactile stimulation when
manipulating surfaces like a touchscreen can affect the perceived
pleasantness (Lylykangas et al., 2011).
When combined with visual (Akshita et al., 2015) or auditory stim-
ulation (Salminen et al., 2012), vibrotactile stimuli contribute to high
arousal values. Visual qualities seem to dominate the overall affective
qualities of the multimodal stimulation consisting partly of vibrotactile
haptic stimuli (Jiao & Xu, 2020) but vibrotactile stimulation is effective
in amplifying the emotions experienced (Mazzoni and Bryan-Kinns,
2016a). Unpleasant vibrotactile stimuli are reported as more pleasant in
the presence of environmental noise, further suggesting that such
stimulation is not effective in creating strong affective responses in the
presence of other modality inputs (Salminen et al., 2009; Salminen et al.,
2011). Because of the strong interaction between vibrotactile stimuli
and other modalities, alternative means of triggering affective responses
via haptics need to be considered.
Thermal stimulation is centrally related to the feeling of pleasure and
arousal (Wilson et al., 2016). Overall, the previous research shows that
stimuli mildly warmer than the human skin temperature (e.g., +2◦C) are
rated as pleasant; while stimuli aiming to heat the skin more (e.g., +6◦C)
are rated as unpleasant and arousing even though the stimulation would
not reach the thermal pain threshold (Salminen et al., 2011; Salminen
et al., 2013). However, as with vibrotactile stimulation, there is initial
evidence suggesting that information acquired by other modalities
would dominate the perception of pleasantness, while thermal stimu-
lation would dominate the perception of arousal (e.g., Tewell et al.,
2017).
Mid-air haptics can effectively produce haptic sensations all over the
body, and by manipulating the intensity and movement of these stimuli,
it is possible to affect the experienced valence, arousal, and dominance
(Sato and Ueoka, 2017; Tsalamlal et al., 2015). Further, mid-air haptics
can be expressive and successfully mediate complex emotional states
such as happiness, sadness, excitedness, or fear (Obrist et al., 2015).
Recently, the CT touch theory has been motivating researchers to
use, for example, fabric-based tactile displays. The initial results show
that modulating the strength, texture, duration, and velocity of a
stroking gesture similar to a caress affected the valence ratings; where
fast movements were rated as unpleasant and slow movements were
rated as pleasant (Bianchi et al., 2014; Taneja et al., 2021; Toet et al.,
2011; Zhu et al., 2020). These fabric-based interfaces, worn usually as
sleeves, are effective in modulating the perceived arousal, excited vs.
calm, when the pace of the haptic stimulation is varied (Papadopoulou
et al., 2019).
Despite the technology used, there is a negative correlation between
the rated haptic stimulus pleasantness and its arousal (Salminen et al.,
2008; Zheng and Morrell, 2012; Mazzoni & Bryan-Kinns, 2015). Further,
there is hardly a conclusion about which parameters of the haptic system
can be used to trigger affective experiences via a mediated interface.
Schneider et al. (2016) suggest that vibrotactile icons require more
research and the use of high-quality analytical tools like crowdsourcing
can help reduce the gap.
By combining different haptic technologies like vibrotactile and
thermal, the available range of emotions evoked by the haptic stimula-
tion can be enriched (e.g., Wilson & Brewster, 2017). At the moment,
combining different haptic technologies like warmth and vibration has
been rare, despite the fact that wearable devices which enable touch
stimulation via multiple methods have been evaluated positively
(Arafsha et al., 2015).
Affective haptics in communicational setting
Mediated social touch has potential in various forms of emotion-
related communication such as establishing connectedness between
romantic couples (Haans & IJsselsteijn, 2006). In its simplest form,
haptic stimulation can be used to create an illusion of physical
co-presence while the actual emotions are mediated via visual stimula-
tion (Tsetserukou & Neviarouskaya, 2012). Often, prosocial gestures
like hugs (Teh et al., 2009; Tsetserukou, 2010) are mimicked to evoke
pleasant affective experiences.
Some of the earliest studies in the area of remote haptic communi-
cation were focused on studying what could be communicated using
touch alone. Smith and MacLean (2007) instructed their participants to
communicate emotions such as anger, delight, calmness, and joy to a
partner with a 1-degree of freedom force-feedback knob. The results
showed the potential to communicate these emotions with a minimal
haptic device with a 54% accuracy. Bailenson et al. (2007) showed that
with a 2-degree of freedom force-feedback device the seven universal
emotions (disgust, anger, sadness, joy, fear, interest, surprise) can be
conveyed at above-chance level. Rantala et al. (2011) further showed
that vibrotactile stimulation can effectively mediate unpleasant,
pleasant, relaxed, and aroused intentions between two people when a
member of a dyad uses input gestures like squeezes and strokes, while
the other feels the vibrations in the palm area (Rantala et al., 2013b).
Gestures like pinching, squeezing, and twisting (Simons et al., 2020)
or poking (Park et al., 2011) can be successfully mediated to enhance the
interaction, with the most popular gesture being stroking. In a series of
studies, authors tested a haptic sleeve for remote communication
(Huisman et al., 2016; Huisman et al., 2013) and showed that vibro-
tactile stimulation on the arm can be perceived as a continuous stroking
sensation like a gentle touch that activates CT-afferents. Other studies
report comparable results where a distant stroke can be perceived as
comfortable and like an actual caress (Eichhorn et al., 2008). Creating
stroking gestures with vibrotactile actuators shows how CT touch (see
R. Raisamo et al.
International Journal of Human - Computer Studies 166 (2022) 102881
5
Section 2.2) can be replicated if characteristics like velocity are consid-
ered. For example, studies have shown how strokes at low amplitude are
felt as pleasant and those with high amplitude are felt as unpleasant
(Israr & Abnousi, 2018). Additional factors such as long duration and a
short inter-stimulus-interval maximize the feeling of continuation and
pleasantness (Culbertson et al., 2018). To promote the feeling of in-
timacy, other types of caressing gestures like touching ngers via haptic
gloves can be used (e.g., Singhal et al., 2017).
In multimodal settings, touch can easily be used to highlight the
emotional content of a story (Wang et al., 2012) or music (Chan et al.,
2019). There are also studies indicating people’s preferences in using
multimodal settings to communicate emotions instead of haptics alone
(Mullenbach et al., 2014).
Erk et al. (2015) showed how mediated affective touch can enhance
prosocial behavior (e.g., understanding of the partner). Vibrotactile
stimulation can facilitate social interactions for the visually impaired
when a pattern shape or duration is varied to inuence affective re-
sponses (e.g., McDaniel et al., 2014). However, although thermal stim-
ulation relates to human emotions, its effects in mediated contexts do
not include elevation in prosocial behavior (Willemse et al., 2018).
As noted by Askari et al. (2020), results related to mediated social
touch are mixed, and information about contextual factors potentially
affecting the perception of mediated social touch and its affective
qualities is virtually inexistent. Studies have also shown unambiguous
evidence that comprehensive methodologies such as sociotechnical
imaginary, which is a future-oriented method to connect social and
technological orders (Jewitt et al., 2020a) and research over touch
norms especially from gendered and cultural points-of-view (Jewitt
et al., 2020b) could enrich designing haptic interfaces supporting
interpersonal touch. Furthermore, even though tactile sensations can be
associated with different emotions, there are only a few papers
addressing comparisons between haptic technologies. Preliminary
studies indicate that force feedback is perceived as more natural than
vibrotactile touch and has a better ability to express emotions (e.g.,
Ahmed et al., 2016).
Discussion
Our vision for the future is that haptics would provide as natural
interpersonal haptic communication channel as possible, both in the
quality and the range of different stimuli produced. This high-quality
haptic communication channel should have low latency to allow real-
time haptic communication. We expect this type of haptics to be an
essential building block of the metaverse where people would live and
work in the future.
In this Section, we rst present nine emerging research themes based
on the present state of the art. Then, we discuss the societal impact and
ethical considerations related to wider availability, acceptance, and
utilization of interpersonal haptic communication.
Emerging research themes for the future
The following themes are based on the present state of the art and the
authors’ views of the future trends in haptics. In each theme, we rst
describe current challenges from the point of interpersonal haptic
communication. Then, the state of the theme is summarized, and the
research gap recognized. Finally, we provide key research directions to
advance the theme.
Theme 1: Mediated touch vs. non-mediated touch
Challenge: To adapt mediated social touch technology (Huisman,
2017) to the ways how humans use non-mediated touch in their daily
lives. There is not a general understanding of which aspects of
non-mediated touch are essential for mediated touch technology.
State: Often, the aim of mediated touch (see Section 4) is to mimic
human tactile behavior via haptics and to investigate its effects. The
identication of the key differences between mediated and non-
mediated touch would give fruitful ground for applications, where the
remote touch could be designed to better affect human emotions or
enhance social bonds. Additional factors affecting the communication
setting include, for example, interpersonal distance and social norms
(Askari et al., 2020).
Research gap: Mediated social touch is typically not recognized as
similar to non-mediated touch (van Hattum et al., 2022; Askari et al.,
2020). Possible explanations for this include the incapability of current
haptic technology to realistically simulate a human touch and the lack of
understanding of the wider setting where mediated social touch takes
place (Askari et al., 2020). Thus, more research is needed both related to
the used technological solutions as well as the social, perceptual, and
other factors.
Key Research Directions
•Identify the underlying social, perceptual, and technological factors
that are essential for a tactile stimulus to be perceived as an inter-
personal touch.
•Study the effects of the sender’s or receiver’s personality or current
mood in the context of remote touch.
•Study whether the effects of context are similar when the touch is
mediated vs. non-mediated.
•Investigate if social cues function similarly in real and mediated
touch settings.
Theme 2: Combinations of haptic sub-modalities
Challenge: To ensure haptic interpersonal communication can
achieve an information transfer rate that is closer to visual and auditory
communication, it is important to utilize all available haptic sub-
modalities.
State: Numerous actuation technologies (see Section 3) and mate-
rials (Biswas and Visell, 2019; Cruz et al., 2018) providing both tactile
(Coe et al., 2019; Farooq et al., 2020; Evreinov et al., 2021) and kines-
thetic output (Kim and Follmer, 2019; Elvitigala et al., 2022), have been
developed for skin stimulation controlled with physical parameters (e.
g., displacement, acceleration, electrical current, pressure) (Farooq
et al., 2015). The studies that integrated more than one of these tech-
nologies into a single haptic interface showed that this can improve
social and affective responses to the distant touch (Farooq et al., 2016b,
Coe et al., 2019, Ahmed et al., 2016; Arafsha et al., 2015; Wilson &
Brewster, 2017; Messerschmidt et al., 2022). Using a combination of
technologies, we can ensure the resulting feedback can deliver a wider
bandwidth of haptic information (Tan et al., 2010).
Research gap: The knowledge of combining haptic sub-modalities is
underdeveloped. Currently, the vibrotactile stimulation only creates
rudimentary tactile output in the absence of a meaningful feedback loop
essentially causing signal integration and attenuation across the entire
device. The conguration also rarely accounts for environmental noise.
Getting an understanding of how composite haptic information can be
designed for the user at the point of contact can maximize information
exchange (see Section 2.1).
Key Research Directions
•Extend the haptic information channel, focusing on creating a wide
range of tactile outputs by combining multiple actuation
technologies.
•Bridge the gap between the available sensory bandwidth and the
optimum information transfer, by combining different sub-
modalities and technologies.
•Ensure haptic communication is as robust and reliable as commu-
nication with visual and auditory modalities, across different con-
texts of use.
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6
Theme 3: Multisensory communication context
Challenge: To integrate digital touch seamlessly as a part of remote
multimodal communication to create positive, socially and emotionally
meaningful and real life like experiences for people.
State: The perception of affective touch is modulated by simulta-
neous visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory simulation (Spence,
2022). Previous research (see Section 4) has focused on using simple
vibrotactile stimulation to amplify emotions evoked by visual or audi-
tory content (Mazzoni and Bryan-Kinns, 2016b). However, people prefer
to communicate emotions multimodally (Mullenbach et al., 2014). Still,
CT touch (McGlone & Reilly, 2010) is rarely addressed with the present
haptic technologies or studied in multisensory context (Toet et al.,
2011).
Research gap: Currently, there is a lack of understanding of the
potential to use haptics in multisensory context beyond amplifying
emotions conveyed via other modalities. Contextual factors (Askari
et al., 2020), the role of haptic sub-modalities like thermal stimulation
(Ahmed et al., 2016; Willemse et al., 2018), and touch norms (Jewitt
et al., 2020b) all contribute towards the perception of social or affective
haptics in multimodal context.
Key Research Directions
•Study the ability to reproduce CT touch (see Section 2.2) via haptic
interfaces.
•Study the role and potential of haptic stimulation in multisensory
communication where other sensorial information is provided in
parallel.
•Compare mediated touch in multisensory context to multisensory
communication in real life.
Theme 4: Wearable haptics and extended reality
Challenge: To emotionally interpret haptic sensations on their body
provided by wearable systems, e.g., tickling sensations on their skin.
Informative touch in the context of interpersonal communication via
wearables should provide emotional connotations besides the physical
sensations.
State: Wearable haptics such as smart clothes are under active
research. The most common body site remains the forearm to simulate
caress-like sensations (see Section 2.2). Vibrotactile handheld control-
lers remain the dominant interaction method in current commercial VR
systems. Nonetheless, wearable haptic technologies are actively devel-
oped creating new opportunities for research to create haptic systems
that deliver sensations on the body. Companies such as HaptX, VRgluv,
and more recently Meta Reality Labs have developed glove-based haptic
systems that can concurrently provide actuation and tracking. As an
alternative to these glove-like exoskeletons, haptic vests and suits (e.g.,
Teslasuit) that provide haptic stimulation to multiple sites on the user’s
body can be used to provide minimal and effective haptic feedback
(García-Valle et al., 2017; Krogmeier et al., 2019).
Research gap: The affective and emotional nature of the sensations
depends on the people engaging in the mediated tactile interaction and
affects how they are felt on the body (see Section 4). Currently available
haptic stimuli have been found not to be able to articulate their meaning
or connection to real touch (Jewitt et al., 2021). The experience is often
restricted to sensations or a different perceptual experience. Most
importantly, the experience is lacking emotional cues (Ziat et al., 2020).
A thorough investigation of concurrent or congruent haptic stimulation
is necessary to test for such effects.
Key Research Directions
•Determine the most suitable actuation technologies and methods for
integrating them into wearable devices and clothes.
•Investigate socially acceptable body sites for remote touch in
different contexts.
•Design emotionally expressive haptic stimuli for wearables.
Theme 5: The role of the sender in haptic communication
Challenge: To understand when, why, and how the senders want to
initiate mediated social touch (see Section 4.3.2). The situation of
initiating a mediated touch is different than using touch in a shared
space with another person.
State: Gestural input and its related haptic output do not often match
real touch. Research should focus on interaction methods where haptic
inputs match remote gestures triggered by another person (e.g., a haptic
sleeve activated by remote stroking gestures). The sender’s role is often
missing in remote communication studies even though it is easy to
envision how initiating touch is related to positive affect and social
experiences. Even in robotic interaction, humans use actual, tactile
gestures with robots (Yohanan et al., 2005; Yohanan & MacLean, 2012).
This suggests a need for developing more expressive and realistic means
for distant touch input instead of limiting the initiation of touch to the
use of a surface, e.g., a touchscreen.
Research gap: There is a gap in understanding how different input
devices affect the sender’s perception of initiated touch. There are
studies where touch-sensitive clothes or pieces of fabric (e.g., Huisman
et al., 2013) have been used as the platform for initiating touches.
Additional studies could focus on the role of articial skin sensors in the
use of mediated social touch. Further research possibilities lie in
studying how the person initiating mediated touches perceives the
communication setting. For example, when is it appropriate to initiate
touch contact so that the person receiving the touch does not get startled
or surprised (van Hattum et al., 2022)? Contextual factors (e.g., facial
and verbal cues) can likely affect when and how touch is initiated.
Key Research Directions
•Explore the role of different touch sensing technologies on how
mediated social touch is initiated.
•Study the contextual and multisensory factors affecting the initiation
of mediated social touch.
•Investigate the sender’s social and emotional responses during the
communication and initiating touch.
Theme 6: Haptic illusions
Challenge: To make haptic communication more expressive by
using haptic illusions. This would contribute towards the potential to use
common vibrotactile actuators in affective and social communication
(see Section 4).
State: Haptic illusions (Lederman & Jones, 2011) are still underu-
tilized even though a growing body of research points towards the po-
tential of creating motion-based sensations and distinguishing certain
haptic sensations as continuous or discontinuous to trigger some affec-
tive responses (Ziat & Raisamo, 2017; Ziat et al., 2018). Special interest
has been given to suppression phenomena (Ziat et al., 2010) such as
apparent motion (Israr and Poupyrev, 2011) or the cutaneous-rabbit
illusion, CRI (Gerald and Sherrick, 1972). Two subsequent tactile stim-
uli in two separate locations on the skin can be either felt as a continuous
or a discontinuous motion. If both stimuli vibrate simultaneously, it can
lead to a phenomenon known as tactile suppression where one stimulus
is masked by another. Stimulus parameters such as duration, frequency,
and amplitude (Raisamo et al., 2013) are a key combination for effective
haptic illusions.
Research gap: The research is limited to specic applications
determining stimulus features to classify the motion-like illusions into
categories (e.g., apparent motion, saltation, suppression), with few
studies exploring the affective aspects of illusions. The pleasure
dimension for tactile stimulation is often offset by visual stimulation
while arousal and dominance can be modulated by the tactile stimula-
tion (Ziat et al., 2020). Further investigations are required to understand
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International Journal of Human - Computer Studies 166 (2022) 102881
7
the affective multimodal integration and how it could be applied.
Key Research Directions
•Study the effect of stimulus parameters with haptic illusions to
support social and emotional remote touch.
•Dene mapping and standardization of the parameters for each
haptic illusion to allow using them with different communication
equipment.
•Investigate multimodal illusions involving haptics.
Theme 7: Adaptive Haptic Mediation
Challenge: To ensure that the encoded haptic signals are mediated
to the point of contact with minimal degradation. Haptic signals for
interpersonal communication can suffer from signal attenuation and
integration depending on environmental noise. This would not only
guarantee high information transfer rate (Tan et al., 2010) but also
provide much needed reliability and intimacy.
State: Tactile or kinesthetic feedback (see Section 3) is commonly
one component within a multimodal system (Laput et. al., 2015; Kim et.
al., 2012). It is important to make all modalities of the system work
effectively with each other (Zhaoyuan et. al., 2015). Instead of simply
emphasizing on improving the efciency of the actuation source (Hay-
ward et al., 2008) or enhancing the perceptual outcome of the created
signal (Umetani et al., 2016), current research (Farooq, 2017) focuses on
improving the entire haptic feedback loop: 1. how the source of the
feedback generates the intended signal (Evreinov et al., 2021), 2. How it
is mediated within the device (Farooq et al., 2020, Coe et al., 2019), and
3. How to ensure signal integrity at the point of contact (Evreinov et al.,
2017; Pantera and Hudin, 2019) within the tactile sensitivity range.
Research gap: There are three key challenges with the current ap-
proaches of providing haptic feedback: 1) inefcient delivery of the
signal, 2) static actuation, and 3) the lack of dynamic adjustment within
the system. Generated haptic signals are intended to propagate uni-
formly, distributing the vibration energy across the entire device
equally, but virtually no effort is made to ensure this (Basdogan et al.,
2020; Evreinov et al., 2017; Farooq et al., 2016a). Actuators and driving
mechanisms are coupled using performance parameters (i.e., resonance
frequency and displacement) rather than using the overall system ca-
pabilities, especially in multi-actuation setups (Dhiab and Hudin, 2019).
The lack of a viable feedback loop within the system means that stan-
dardized haptic signals cannot be implemented across different devices
(Hudin et al., 2015).
Key Research Directions
•Actively adjust the output of multiple actuation components with
respect to environmental noise and propagation inefciencies.
•Study the use of different surface materials to create more capable
haptic systems.
•Use articial intelligence methods to model interaction contexts and
to modify haptic feedback parameters, creating a more robust end-
to-end haptic communication channel.
Theme 8: Contactless touch
Challenge: To deliver expressive haptic information without phys-
ically touching a system. Contactless touch (see Section 3.4) is already
available, but much is still unknown of how to make it as expressive as
other actuation technologies.
State: Potential solutions exist, such as mid-air ultrasound haptics
(Obrist et al., 2015), pneumatic haptics (Sodhi et al., 2013), magnetic
haptic effects (Ge et al., 2019), and thermal haptics (Salminen et al.,
2013). Despite existing technological obstacles, contactless haptic
stimulation has been found to be effective in conveying social and
emotional content (e.g., Obrist et al., 2015). It is necessary to investigate
these technologies as a part of multimodal communication scenarios and
to study behavioral and emotional experiences related to stimulus
perception.
Research gap: Existing solutions have technological limitations:
Resolution of thermal and mid-air haptics is often low, meaning that
providing accurate stimulation to a certain location of interaction is
difcult. Mid-air haptic devices typically require a stable distance be-
tween the user and the device, while controlling the temperature
changes in a thermal device has a low temporal resolution (e.g., Sal-
minen et al., 2011) and a magnetic device has a low spatial resolution.
Key Research Directions
•Increase the spatial and temporal resolution with the current
technologies.
•Create interaction methods that best suit for touchless haptic
interaction.
•Investigate combinations of different contactless touch technologies
(e.g., ultrasound and thermal haptics).
Theme 9: Articial skin
Challenge: Human-like skin mesh can enhance communication in
social interaction. Current embedded sensors require a trade-off be-
tween technical capabilities, realistic interactive output, and the cost
associated with covering a large surface area of interaction.
State: There is a wide range of approaches for designing articial
skin (Silvera-Tawil et al., 2015, Tiwana et al., 2012). Force-sensing re-
sistors are commonly used to sense touch (Akhtar et al., 2017) because
of their accessibility and cost (Yeung et al., 1994). Resistive (Kli-
maszewski, et al., 2019) or piezo-resistive (Canavese et al., 2014) skin
structures have also been under development (Asfour et al., 2006;
Mukai et al., 2008). The latter are commonly ridged and create brittle
texture when embedded into articial skin (Ulmen and Cutkosky, 2010;
Honnet et al., 2020), resulting in a complex fabrication process with
unnatural texture. One way to avoid this issue is to embed a soft cushion
layer (Fritzsche et al., 2011), or cover the sensing elements with textile
(Tomo et al., 2018). Other sensors covered with silicone-based materials
give a more “pleasant” and human-like feel (Shirado et al., 2006; Minato
et al., 2007; Schmitz et al., 2011). Most of these techniques render the
sensor mesh less efcient and in turn require forced touch, to register
even subtle contact.
Research Gap: There is a need (Yousse et al., 2014; Teyssier et al.,
2021) for articial skin designs to follow the tradition of human-friendly
articial skin (O’Neill et al., 2018) and adopt specic requirements for
sensor implementation. Articial skin and relevant sensor arrays can be
implemented by replicating the three main layers of the human skin:
epidermis, hypodermis, and dermis. Each layer should use sensor fusion
to provide the necessary sensory input for tactile interaction.
Key Research Directions
•Develop high enough tactile acuity to detect complex yet subtle
tactile information.
•Make articial skin soft, deformable, and comfortable to touch
having similar properties to human skin (see Section 2).
•Design geometry and materials of the articial skin mesh compliant
with the requirements of the application area.
•Next, we discuss the impact and ethical considerations that the next-
level interpersonal haptic communication technologies could have in
the society and everyday living. As with any technology, the impact
can be both positive and negative depending on how this is applied
and how people nally make use of it. We must be prepared for both
the opportunities and threats that interpersonal haptic communica-
tion may bring when it is widely available.
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8
Societal impact
The importance of social touch goes beyond simple interactions by
providing emotional and psychological stability to humans (Dominian,
1971; Fisher et al., 1976). For people suffering from dementia, whose
hearing and visual abilities have been diminished, touch remains the
only bond to the external world by providing comfort and connections
during a disorienting or agitated behavior (Kim and Buschmann, 1999;
Viggo Hansen et al., 2006; Wu et al., 2017).
Interpersonal haptic communication systems are particularly bene-
cial for users with special needs, such as visual or hearing impairments.
For example, deafblind users rely heavily on touch in their communi-
cation, and mediating touch over a distance would enable remote
communication for them. In fact, early research in the eld of haptics
was largely focused on sensory substitution systems for individuals with
visual and/or hearing impairment. Systems such as Tadoma (Reed et al.,
1996), Teletactor (Gault, 1927), Vibratese (Geldard, 1957), Optacon
(Linvill & Bliss, 1966), TVSS (White et al., 1970), and Tactuator (Tan &
Rabinowitz, 1996) coded alphabetical and numerical information typi-
cally received via the visual and auditory modalities to haptic stimula-
tion. Due to the recent developments in wearable technologies, mobile
haptic aids can become more widely available.
Examples of recent research include work on sound-to-touch sensory
substitution systems that are designed to convert audio recorded from
the environment to vibrotactile stimulation presented with a vest
(Novich & Eagleman, 2015). Neosensory Buzz is a commercial product
that uses the same principle to present audio from the environment to a
haptic band worn on the wrist.
In addition, the relationship to the toucher, cultural context, and
other factors affecting tactile social interaction such as body area,
gender, age and environments. To our knowledge, there has not been a
thorough study related to touch throughout development from infancy
to adulthood, passing through childhood and adolescence. Touch plays a
vital role in child development (Frank, 1957). That said, there is a
universal consensus that the older the child, the more funneled the
tactile contact becomes with relatively small age variations based on the
culture (Jones & Yarbrough, 1985). Kinships affect this dynamic even
more, determining the area on the body considered acceptable for touch
(Suvilehto et al., 2015). In adulthood, touching the whole body is
considered off-limits to most kinships, including parents. Touch by
mothers extends to larger body areas than fathers are allowed to touch,
while touch by a stranger is only limited to handshakes. Overall, the
social bond correlated highly with the total body area being touched.
The stronger the bond the larger the area on the body (Suvilehto et al.,
2015). Even between partners, touch dynamics change whether they are
in a private or public space. These known limitations for the use of touch
are important also from a remote touch point of view: understanding the
context and the relationship between the sender and receiver of the
touch is essential in order to evoke positive social experiences.
Finally, environmental, and cultural factors play a role in proxemic
behavior. People living in cold areas such as Canada tend to have a
larger personal space than those living in warm areas such as the South
America. Dense populations such as India have lower expectations of
personal space (Duby, 1992). Additionally, Hall made a distinction be-
tween high-contact cultures and noncontact cultures (Hall, 1966; Lustig
and Koester, 1996). High-contact cultures are Latin American, Middle
Eastern and southern European, where hugging and kissing are often
daily interactions during conversations. These tactile demonstrations
are less common or inexistent between North Americans, Northern Eu-
ropeans, and Asians during conversations (Mazur, 1977; Høgh-Olesen,
2008) often limited to a handshake or a bowing. Such cultural differ-
ences will affect the uptake of different remote haptic technologies and
should be considered while designing haptic systems.
Ethical Considerations
Ethical considerations related to emerging technologies is a hot topic
especially in the context of VR, cybernetics, and AI. With haptics, the
discussion is almost nonexistent. As Boothroyd (2009) indicates, the
ethical attention to our digital and cyber spaces is focused mainly on the
visual dimension. The optimistic cheer for the potential of improving
human lives while the pessimistic worry that these technological en-
hancements would lead to invasive situations on both privacy and
psychological levels. Moreover, due to their cost, access to emerging
technologies would only be limited to an elite audience increasing hence
the gap of inequality within the society (Brenner, 2013). Haptic tech-
nology faces the same challenges and considerations as other emerging
technologies.
Privacy remains one of the most important values for humans when
it comes to technology. Similar to a webcam that can be activated at
distance without the user’s knowledge, a haptic device could be subject
to hacking if it is connected through the internet. For instance, a device
can trigger vibrations or pressure when they are not needed or desired,
or without the knowledge of the person being touched. Our phones
already vibrate, when we do not expect this, providing us with noti-
cations. We accept those vibrations and we do not consider them as a
privacy invasion. The context would be different if someone hacked your
phone at a distance and triggered its vibrations without your consent.
The context used would be completely different if someone were con-
trolling a wearable haptic device on a part of your body. Birnbaum
(2020) used the term “haptic spam” for situations where someone ac-
tivates a haptic device without your permission. The worst-case situa-
tion would be a rape per deception, where a person can forcibly control a
sex toy at distance (Sparrow & Karas, 2020).
The invasive nature of some external devices to extend or modify
temporarily or permanently the human body begets some ethical, phil-
osophical, and legal aspects about the nature of the invasion itself. The
legal terminology is blurred as pointed out in a case study by MacDon-
ald Glenn (2012), where an airline caused damage to a mobility assistive
device (MAD) of an individual dependent on such system. The case was
solved by a compensation agreement where the passenger and the MAD
were perceived as a merged person. Despite being mostly out of the
scope of the present article, similar problems will become more common
if haptic technologies become interchangeable parts of the human
communication abilities via human augmentation (Raisamo et al.,
2019). Sensory restrictions enforced by the biomechanical structure of
our skin and the mechanoreceptors therein may not be a limiting factor
in the evolution of social touch. Concepts like cognitive touch, where the
brain is articially stimulated to allow physical and virtual interaction
may become a future paradigm for tactile communication.
Although haptic technology will provide us with new ways of
communicating with each other, these shared experiences are highly
dependent on the social contexts and can provide a framework for the
ethical issues raised above. The launch of the Metaverse space, where
escapism (Han et al., 2022), harassment, and virtual groping (Falchuk,
Loeb, & Neff, 2018) are growing, requires more research to establish
digital ethics guidelines.
Conclusions
The development of technology will allow better replication of real
touch which will improve the quality of mediated social touch. This will
enable focus on ner details of interpersonal communication and make
it possible to reach a deeper understanding of mediated social touch. The
emerging themes presented are expected to have an impact on
advancing this eld. Humans frequently use the sense of touch in their
daily lives to promote prosocial behavior, intimacy, and social bonding.
Consequently, mediating social touch over a distance has gained a lot of
interest in the research community, but traditional vibrotactile stimu-
lation methods are not optimal to convey either distinct, social, or
R. Raisamo et al.
International Journal of Human - Computer Studies 166 (2022) 102881
9
affective qualities of touch.
A growing body of research suggests that humans benet from the
use of mediated touch in social and emotional contexts. Our elaboration
of emerging research themes helps provide directions for researchers
interested in emotional and social aspects of mediated touch or the latest
technological developments of simulated touch. Still, the societal
acceptability and accessibility of these technologies as well as ethical
considerations related to privacy and social equality need to be
considered. Within a few years, mediated social touch will be on the
verge of becoming universally available, so research on this topic is
timely and necessary.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Roope Raisamo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – orig-
inal draft, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administra-
tion, Funding acquisition. Katri Salminen: Conceptualization,
Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review &
editing, Funding acquisition. Jussi Rantala: Conceptualization, Inves-
tigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review &
editing. Ahmed Farooq: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodol-
ogy, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization.
Mounia Ziat: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing –
original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing nancial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inuence
the work reported in this paper.
Funding
This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [grant numbers:
326415 and 337776].
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Roope Raisamo is a professor of computer science in Tampere
University, Faculty of Information Technology and Communi-
cation Sciences. He received his PhD degree in computer sci-
ence from the University of Tampere in 1999. He is the head of
TAUCHI Research Center, leading Multimodal Interaction
Research Group. His 27-year research experience in the eld of
human-technology interaction is focused on multimodal
interaction, XR, haptics, gaze, gestures, interaction techniques,
and software architectures.
Katri Salminen is a project manager in Tampere University of
Applied Sciences, School of Industrial Engineering. She
completed her PhD in Interactive Technology in 2015. Over her
career, she has focused on research and development on
several topics in human-computer interaction including mixed
reality, haptics, i/o techniques and multimodality. Her work
mostly focuses on manufacturing industry and applied
research.
Jussi Rantala is a Staff Scientist in Tampere University, Fac-
ulty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences.
He received his PhD in Interactive Technology in 2014. He has
worked as a postdoctoral researcher (2015-2019) and senior
research fellow (2020-2021) at the Tampere Unit of Computer-
Human Interaction (TAUCHI). His research focuses on multi-
sensory experiences, haptics, olfaction, and immersive visual
technologies.
Ahmed Farooq is a haptics researcher at the Tampere Unit of
Computer Human Interaction (TAUCHI) at Tampere Univer-
sity. He completed his PhD in Computer Science and Interac-
tive Technology in 2017 and has over 19 years of experience in
multimodal interaction, Software development & testing, and
system engineering. His main interests are developing new
techniques and standards for providing tactile feedback in
mobile and handheld devices and for the last four years he has
been working on Haptic Signal Mediation.
Mounia Ziat is an Associate Professor at Bentley University.
Relying on her multidisciplinary background, Dr. Ziat’s
approach to science is holistic; her goals are to better under-
stand perception and human interaction with the natural and
articial environment. For the last twenty years, she has been
studying haptic perception by combining engineering, cogni-
tive psychology, human-computer interaction (HCI), and
neuroscience to understand all aspects of human touch. Her
research focuses on making sense of sensations that lead to a
stable perception of the world. Dr. Ziat holds an Electronic
Engineering degree and a Master and Ph.D. in Cognitive
Science.
R. Raisamo et al.
