Synthesis of Haptic Textures Transmitting Predetermined Feelings and Emotions

Textures are widely present in our daily life. In the last years many researchers have focused their efforts on the study of tactile texture perception as a result of their expanding interest in the fields of psychophysics (LaMotte, Srinivasan, 1991), neuroscience (Connor, Johnson, 1992), and computational modeling (Lederman, Klatzky, Tong, Hamilton, 2006). This increasing interest is partly because of the many applications where tactile sense could play a crucial role as, for example, product design (Henson, Barnes, Livesey, Childs, Ewart, 2006).
Despite the wide use of haptic textures there is a lack of scientific studies on the emotional qualities and expectations associated with specific textures. In order to fill that gap, a new project, financially supported by the European Commission, aims at providing methods and a theory to objectively measure, model, and predict psychological effects emerging from the touch of textures.
In this article, the main guidelines of the project aimed to the synthesis of haptic textures specified to evoke certain feelings and expectations are presented.