“To touch is to give life”
█Touchless
This 4-year R&D project is funded by the EU H2020 program. Motivated by the rise of social media and the absence of touch, our team of experts from 3 universities and 3 industry partners is developing the next-generation of TOUCHLESS haptic technologies. Our ambition is to enable novel social experiences through touch.
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.
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The increased virtualisation of our social interactions feeds our hunger for touch, the lack of which can have profoundly negative consequences.
█haptic technology
Touchless haptic technologies induce tactile sensations remotely, without the need to wear or hold any controllers, or contact tactile displays. This makes touchless technologies hygienic, easy to use, and pervasive.
In this project, our ambition is to go beyond functional haptic technology (simple haptic notifications and feedback to discriminate between objects) and enable computer systems to intelligently create the experiences that were previously lost in the virtual transition.
