Air Can Transfer Human Emotions to the Palm of Your Hand

by Monica Joshi

We can sense pheromones, we can also sense love in the air during Valentine's Day. Imagine if you could actually sense emotions as personally as through the palm of your hand. With the help of an experimental system called Ultrahaptics, it is now possible.

Ultrahaptics can stimulate different areas of the hand to convey feelings of happiness, sadness, comfort, excitement, or even fear. Short, sharp bursts of air to the area around the thumb, index finger and middle part of the palm, for example, can generate feelings of excitement.

The study, presented at the CHI 2015 conference in South Korea, had one group of participants create patterns to describe the emotions evoked by five separate images: calm scenery with trees, white-water rafting, a graveyard, a car on fire, and a wall clock. The participants were allowed to pinpoint position, direction, frequency, intensity and duration of the emotions evoked by the images.

A completely different group was then able to select the simulations, created using air pressure on the palm of the viewer's hand, that represented the aforementioned images and the emotions associated with those images. Finally, the last group experienced the final 10 air pressure simulations narrowed down by the previous group. They were then asked to describe how well the simulations described the emotions evoked by each image. It was this final group that aided University of Sussex scientist Dr. Marianna Obrist, a lecturer at the Department of Informatics, to conclude that slow and moderate stimulation of the outer palm and the area around the pinky finger creates sad feelings.

The SenseX project spearheaded by Dr. Obrist aims to provide a multi-sensory framework for communication technology that can design richer technological experiences. Dr. Obrist hopes that in the future, this research will lead to more multi-faceted media experiences, such as 9-dimensional TVs that allow you to simulate tastes previewed on TV.

This new technology could also be the next new step in making long distance relationships more tolerable and even more exciting. While Skype and texting can help you communicate via words and video, this new technology could boost the potential between couples for intimacy.

As Obrist said:

“Imagine a couple that has just had a fight before going to work. While she is in a meeting she receives a gentle sensation transmitted through her bracelet on the right part of her hand moving into the middle of the palm. That sensation comforts her and indicates that her partner is not angry anymore.”

It will be an even more exciting innovation when the project expands to incorporate taste, smell and a more simulated touch.