Humans have the ability to convey an array of emotions through complex and rich touch gestures. However, it is not clear how these touch gestures can be reproduced through interactive systems and devices in a remote mediated communication context. In this article, we explore the design space of device-initiated touch for conveying emotions with an interactive system reproducing a collection of human touch characteristics. For this purpose, we control a robotic arm to touch the forearm of participants with different force, velocity and amplitude characteristics to simulate human touch. In view of adding touch as an emotional modality in human-machine interaction, we have conducted two studies. After designing the touch device, we explore touch in a context-free setup and then in a controlled context defined by textual scenarios and emotional facial expressions of a virtual agent. Our results suggest that certain combinations of touch characteristics are associated with the perception of different degrees of valence and of arousal. Moreover, in the case of non-congruent mixed signals (touch, facial expression, textual scenario) not conveying a priori the same emotion, the message conveyed by touch seems to prevail over the ones displayed by the visual and textual signals.

中文翻译：

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通过设备触发的触摸传达情感

人类有能力通过复杂而丰富的触摸手势来传达一系列情感。然而，目前尚不清楚这些触摸手势如何在远程中介通信环境中通过交互式系统和设备进行复制。在本文中，我们探索了设备触发触摸的设计空间，用于通过再现人类触摸特征集合的交互系统来传达情感。为此，我们控制机械臂以不同的力、速度和幅度特性触摸参与者的前臂，以模拟人类的触摸。鉴于在人机交互中添加触摸作为一种情感方式，我们进行了两项研究。在设计完触控设备后，我们在无上下文设置中探索触摸，然后在由文本场景和虚拟代理的情感面部表情定义的受控上下文中探索。我们的研究结果表明，触摸特征的某些组合与不同程度的效价和唤醒的感知有关。此外，在不一致的混合信号（触摸、面部表情、文本场景）不传达先验相同的情感的情况下，触摸传达的信息似乎优于视觉和文本信号所显示的信息。