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We routinely communicate distinct social and emotional sentiments through nuanced touch. For example, we might gently hold another's arm to offer a sense of calm, yet intensively hold another's arm to express excitement or anxiety. As this example indicates, distinct sentiments may be shaped by the subtlety in one's touch delivery. This work investigates how slight distinctions in skin-to-skin contact influence both the recognition of cued emotional messages (e.g., anger, sympathy) and the rating of emotional content (i.e., arousal, valence). By self-selecting preferred gestures (e.g., holding, stroking), touchers convey distinct messages by touching the receiver's forearm. Skin-to-skin contact attributes (e.g., velocity, depth, area) are optically tracked in high resolution. Contact is then examined within gesture, between messages. The results indicate touchers subtly, but significantly, vary contact attributes of a gesture to communicate distinct messages, which are recognizable by receivers. This tuning also correlates with receivers' arousal and valence. For instance, arousal increases with velocity for stroking, and depth for holding. Moreover, as shown here with human-to-human touch, valence is tied with velocity, which is the same trend as reported with brushes. The findings indicate that subtle nuance in skin-to-skin contact is important in conveying social messages and inducing emotions.

In this study, Thermogravimetry (TG) were used to analyze thermal degradation properties of two kinds of low-molar ratio of the melamine-modified urea-formaldehyde resin (MUF). The MUF was calculated using Kissinger equation and Flynn-Wall-Ozawa equation Resin pyrolysis activation energy. The results showed that the curing time of low mole was longer than that of MUF resin (muf-b), the content of free formaldehyde was lower, and the formaldehyde emission and wet bonding strength of plywood were reduced by 65.79% and 21.90%, respectively. TG test showed that the pyrolysis process of MUF resins with different molar ratios can be divided into three stages: dehydration, rapid pyrolysis and carbonization. At the same heating rate, the weight loss rate, peak conversion rate and carbon residue of the high molar ratio MUF resin (MUF-a) in the fast pyrolysis stage are larger than those of the MUF-b resin. The MUF-a resin pyrolysis activation energy is 166.76 kJ/mol, and the MUF-b resin pyrolysis activation energy is 95.30 kJ/mol. High molar ratio resin has higher pyrolysis activation energy and better thermal stability.

Across a plethora of social situations, we touch others in natural and intuitive ways to share thoughts and emotions, such as tapping to get one’s attention or caressing to soothe one’s anxiety. A deeper understanding of these human-to-human interactions will require, in part, the precise measurement of skin-to-skin physical contact. Among prior efforts, each measurement approach exhibits certain constraints, e.g., motion trackers do not capture the precise shape of skin surfaces, while pressure sensors impede skin-to-skin contact. In contrast, this work develops an interference-free 3D visual tracking system using a depth camera to measure the contact attributes between the bare hand of a toucher and the forearm of a receiver. The toucher’s hand is tracked as a posed and positioned mesh by fitting a hand model to detected 3D hand joints, whereas a receiver’s forearm is extracted as a 3D surface updated upon repeated skin contact. Based on a contact model involving point clouds, the spatiotemporal changes of hand-to-forearm contact are decomposed as six, high-resolution, time-series contact attributes, i.e., contact area, indentation depth, absolute velocity, and three orthogonal velocity components, together with contact duration. To examine the system’s capabilities and limitations, two types of experiments were performed. First, to evaluate its ability to discern human touches, one person delivered cued social messages, e.g., happiness, anger, sympathy, to another person using their preferred gestures. The results indicated that messages and gestures, as well as the identities of the touchers, were readily discerned from their contact attributes. Second, the system’s spatiotemporal accuracy was validated against measurements from independent devices, including an electromagnetic motion tracker, sensorized pressure mat, and laser displacement sensor. While validated here in the context of social communication, this system is extendable to human touch interactions such as maternal care of infants and massage therapy.