Algorithms and Wearable Technologies Enabling Haptic Communication

Wearable haptics is a promising research field with the long term goal of reliably conveying information through the sense of touch by applying the tactile feedback directly to the wearer. When adopted as a means of communication, wearable haptic interfaces allow for forms of interaction that are spontaneous in face-to-face conversation, but currently missing when the latter is mediated by technology. The research in this field provides opportunity for exploiting the tactile channel also to convey information that we do not normally acquire via touch, not only in the aim of offloading some of the communication from the audiovisual channels, but also for providing richer multimodal instructions. This thesis presents the results of three years of research in wearable haptics, collecting all the work I have done toward the Ph.D degree. In particular, the dissertation focuses on challenges related to the development of algorithms and wearable technologies enabling haptic communication of physical object properties, emotions, and human body postures. Within a few years, mediated touch through wearable devices will be on the verge of becoming universally available even outside the lab context, so research on this topic is timely and necessary. The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to the body of knowledge in wearable haptics, and the results here presented suggest that there is a benefit in the use of the proposed solutions for mediated touch to enhance remote communication.