Touchless Interactions

As part of Touchless.ai, a 4-year R&D project funded by the EU H2020 programme, we are developing the next-generation of touchless haptic technologies.

Our sense of touch enables us to understand our environment but also serves emotional purposes. For example, it provides information (surfaces, textures), it warns us (heat, thorns), it soothes and bonds us (caressing, hugging). Yet, current online and digital interactions make limited use of our sense of touch, often because most haptic technologies require us to wear or hold something, while their capacity to deliver rich tactile sensations is limited compared to how we naturally apply our touch sense in our offline physical and social interactions. Using novel neurocognitive models and AI frameworks, our aim is to imbue our novel TOUCHLESS haptic technologies with the ability to affect and enrich our online social interactions.

One of the avenues we are exploring as part of Touchless is the use of mindfulness mediation on mid-air tactile perception. Studies indicate that increasing our awareness and mindfulness of our senses may lead to a journey of unexplored experiences.

In one of our studies, we focused on the perception of mid-air haptics stimuli and whether it can be improved through mindfulness meditation. We have conducted an experiment with 22 participants given the task to recognize digits 0 to 9 drawn on their palms using a mid-air haptic device under two conditions - with and without prior mindfulness meditation. Results show that for frequencies targeting both Meissner (40 Hz) and Pacinian (200 Hz) receptors, meditation significantly improves performance of the participants, as well as increases their confidence. This suggests that including a short meditation step in haptic user interfaces could lead to improved system performance and user satisfaction.

Read our paper:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581238