New frontiers for digital social touch

Date

Sep 10, 2026

Time

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Speaker

Merle Fairhurst

Affiliation

Chair of Acoustics and Haptics, TU Dresden

Series

TUD nanoSeminar

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Other Topics

Biologie

Host

Arezoo Dianat

Description

Despite the importance of social touch to human flourishing, what we touch the most on a day-to-day basis is our smartphone. New technological developments, including mixed reality technologies, affective haptics and social robots, introduce new ways in which our sense of touch engages with digital technologies. These developments reshape what we touch, how we experience social touch, and ask us to reconsider what role touch can play in social interactions mediated by digital technologies. In this talk, I will present recent work including the development and benchmarking of novel affective haptic devices aimed at enhancing digital social interactions. This will include describing how these devices might improve embodiment and interpersonal connectedness in virtual reality as well as how these might be incorporated into Human-Robot-Interactions to foster trust and cooperation. I will focus on how we evaluate these touch tools with measures that tap into both the meaning of touch (beyond “pleasantness”) and function of touch (e.g. regulating autonomic arousal).

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Last modified: May 31, 2026, 6:11:24 AM