Development of a haptic video chat system

Abstract

Since conventional audio-video teleconferencing systems have reached their limits, the needs of integrating new sensations to improve users' telecommunication experience are growing. Haptics, the sense of touch, which includes handshake, comforting hug, encouraging pat, and other physical contacts, is of great importance for interpersonal communication, since it allows people to express and receive intimate affection, intention or emotion efficiently. Motivated by a few haptic telecommunication softwares, this thesis presents an innovative webcam-based touchscreen to replace the haptic device, which is used in HugMe [30] [26][27] system as human hand, to further increase people's degree of immersion with the audio-video-haptic teleconferencing system at a more reasonable price. With our webcam-based touchscreen, the user could directly use his/her bare hand to touch the image of the person who he/she is chatting with, instead of controlling a haptic device as the medium to realize indirect touch. This thesis also gives details of the touchscreen method and our proposed mathematical models for touch position calculation. Experimental results show that our system is accurate and robust, while maintaining high compatibility with conventional audio-video teleconferencing systems for combination. With our haptic jacket, the passive user can feel the touch of the active user at the right position. Also, additional applications with the touchscreen, such as writing and drawing, are developed and tested. Finally, we draw the conclusions and talk about future work.ii

Embodied, visible, and courteous: exploring robotic social touch with virtual idols

“…This device creates a more intimate interaction than ordinary video calls. To reproduce hugs, clothing-type devices have been proposed, which simulate a conversation while viewing a mirror that displays the hugging users ( Vetere et al, 2005 ; Morikawa et al, 2006 ; Teh et al, 2008 ; Zhang et al, 2015 ). Furthermore, a hug can be reproduced via a voice call while hugging a bolster with a built-in mobile phone ( Sumioka et al, 2013 ).…”

Development of Video Chat System Based on Space Sharing and Haptic Communication

“…Haptic communication is a kind of nonverbal communication that plays an important role in facilitating natural communication. (7)(8)(9) HugMe (9) is a system that introduces haptic feedback to video chat. The system uses a touch screen and a jacket with embedded vibration devices.…”