In the last two years, we have had to distance ourselves from people both physically and socially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This, no doubt, showed us how dependent we are on the existence of other people, and taught us how much of a social creature human beings actually are.
This situation, of course, made it more difficult for those who had to stay away from their loved ones during this process. Even though we continue to communicate with methods such as messaging and video chat, these methods have often been quite inadequate due to our inability to convey our feelings to the other person. However, with a new technology developed by a graduate student from Stanford University, who was affected by his experiences in this process, it seems that it may now be possible to convey our feelings to someone who lives far from us.
Developed a mechanism to simulate the ‘touch’ of a distant person
Stanford University graduate student Millie Salvato had to be separated from her girlfriend during the pandemic, inspired him to create a new technology. Dreaming of making loving and comforting ‘physical contact’ with his lover throughout the pandemic, Salvato and his colleagues have designed a wearable arm assembly that can simulate human touch and transmit abstract social messages sent electronically.
In each test conducted by Salvato and his team, which measured how 37 participants expressed social information in different situations in their study, one participant wore a pressure-sensing device on his arm, while another participant tested attention seeking, gratitude, happiness, calming, love and sadness. touched it to respond to six intended meaning scenarios.
After collecting 661 different touch gestures such as squeezing, hitting, shaking, poking, the research team mapped the position and pressure of each of these gestures. Following this, the team used a machine learning algorithm to select the movements that were the most reliable part of each response; Finally, he programmed a wearable arm sleeve to simulate these movements using eight embedded discs that vibrate when signaled electronically.
It is now possible to be emotionally ‘closer’ with our distant loved ones
Stating that his inventions do not naturally feel like a real human hand, Salvato said, however, that this is out of nowhere. “It honestly feels good.” saves as.
Touch researcher Gregory Gerling from the University of Virginia, who was not involved in the study, describes the study as “unique” in that it deals with how social touch occurs and how it can be reproduced. “Given the small amount of information available to them, I think it’s interesting that the participants understood quite accurately what touch was being conveyed to them,” Gerling said.
The importance of social contact for both physical and mental health has been proven over and over by numerous previous studies. This new technology means that in the future, instead of just sending <3 to our loved ones via phone or computer, we can send them how we are feeling at the moment, and that way we can feel emotionally closer to each other.
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