Touch by textile: Perception and experience of pressure touch by textile actuators on the arm

Social touch is key for our emotional and physical well being throughout life and has strong affective qualities. When we receive less social touch than we desire, we can suffer from touch hunger, i.e. a lack of touch. A lack of touch can cause anxiety, depression and a reduction of overall wellbeing. Older adults are especially susceptible to touch hunger. Social touch can be mediated by technology in an effort to mitigate touch hunger. Wearable technology is a logical choice for the presentation of haptic stimuli, since a wearable is inherently close to the body. Active textile, a novel actuator type that could present soft pressure stimuli, is rapidly moving closer and can be fully integrated in a garment to create a haptic wearable, that could be used to mediate social touch. With such a wearable we could effectively mediate social touch between different generations. A lot of the social touch we experience in daily life, like a hug or a comforting squeeze on the arm, is pressure based. In order to move towards inter-generational haptic interaction fundamental six relevant knowledge gaps on the perception and experience of pressure touch need to be adressed. In this book, we report and discuss the investigations into (1) the perception thresholds of pressure touch on the arm, (2) the effect of surface area on the perception threshold of pressure, (3) the effect of actuation speed the perception thresholds of pressure, (4) the effect of age on the perception threshold of pressure, (5) evoking haptic illusions, with pressure and (6) the effect of different stimulus parameters on the emotional and sensory qualities of pressure by soft actuators.