Our sense of touch enables us to understand our environment but also serves emotional purposes. For example, it provides information (surfaces, textures), it warns us (heat, thorns), it soothes and bonds us (caressing, hugging). Yet, current online and digital interactions make limited use of our sense of touch, often because most haptic technologies require us to wear or hold something, while their capacity to deliver rich tactile sensations is limited compared to how we naturally apply our touch sense in our offline physical and social interactions.

This event is aimed at anyone interested in Emerging Technologies for Social Interaction and participating in proposals targeting one of the forthcoming Horizon Europe CL4 topics.

This event is organised as part of the Haptics Helix - an international Open Innovation community of specialists in the fields haptics technology, affective touch and human computer interaction created to support the TOUCHLESS project.

“Touchless Haptic Experiences with Neurocognitive AI” (TOUCHLESS) is a Horizon 2020 project that aims to go beyond functional haptic technology and enable computer systems to intelligently create the experiences that were previously lost in the virtual transition; a gap recently magnified by social distancing measures due to COVID-19 and remote working. TOUCHLESS is an interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international consortium, formed by 6 partners, including 3 universities and 3 industrial partners from 5 countries, with recognized expertise in the fields of physics, electrical engineering, social computing, psychology and philosophy. The consortium will combine the use of mid-air haptics (e.g., as produced by focusing ultrasound waves), neurocognitive models of haptic-mediated experiences and novel hybrid artificial intelligence (AI) frameworks to emulate virtual social touch interactions that are rich in agency, bonding and attachment.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101017746.

Should you have any questions about the event, please contact us at events@crowdhelix.com