Sending a digital touch

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can no longer hug our friends or family. A digital, or ‘mediated’, touch is a potential solution for such circumstances, when skin-to-skin contact is impossible. The prototype shown can give someone a stroke. We used it to investigate how people experience a mediated touch: what are the effects of the person sending the touch (romantic partner vs. stranger) and the input medium (touchpad vs. a rubber hand).