Methodological Innovation in Designing Sensations and Sentiments from Robot Touch

The critical role of interhuman touch and the rapid development of accessible haptics technology is preluding a new generation of social and assistive robotic interactions that support and enhance human daily life through physical contact, including assisting mobility, mental health, pain management, social bonding, and novel sensory experience for body literacy. For social and assistive robotic systems to fit in the intimate space of physical contact with human bodies, the nature and success of the interaction needs to be interlinked with the sensory and sentimental qualities of robot touch. HRI should not only be driven by function and efficiency, but more critically, the experience of the touch interaction, felt by the human. This raises fundamental methodological challenges. Currently, transferring rich qualitative experience into effective robotic systems has not been made possible, and there is a lack of tools to investigate the ephemeral phenomenon of felt sensations. Addressing this challenge calls for methodological innovation to investigate the sensory and experiential aspects of technology-initiated social touch, through facilitating cross-disciplinary expertise and end-users' involvement. This workshop mobilises experts from diverse disciplines, including robotics engineering, AI, social science, neuroscience, healthcare, soma design and arts. This workshop aims to collectively reflect on strategies, tools and methods for the co-exploration and co-production of Robot-Human Touch Interactions that afford appropriate and desirable human felt experience.