WAT 2015 - Workshop on Affective Touch (WAT)

The tactile sense is a rich sense with strong direct (i.e. coding for affective touch by specialized receptors) and indirect (i.e. pleasant tactile experiences) links to affect. Touch is important in social interactions, such as hugging, and can elicit strong affective responses depending on who is touching, in which context, and to which body part, etc. Furthermore, tactile sensations can be inherently pleasant such as the feel of silk compared to sandpaper.
Considering touch from the view of affective computing poses interesting questions, and offers avenues for research relating to sensing (affective) tactile gestures, generating tactile sensations using haptic feedback. Think for example of using touch for social communication with virtual agents or social robots, exploring virtual worlds using the tactile sense, using haptic feedback to provide information about ones affective state (e.g through heartbeats), or using tactile and force feedback sensors to infer a user’s affective state during interaction.
In this workshop we discuss the current state of, and the future directions for research into affective touch; to highlight good case studies; to reflect on the methodological issues; and to brainstorm about applications.