A simple touch can change our mood, but might bursts of air be just as good? New research gives a glimpse of the emotional effects of technology that can touch us. The results could be used to create more emotion-based telepresence systems – or could add another dimension to video games.

Touch-based, or haptic, feedback devices range from the humble vibrating phone, to sophisticated touchscreens, to gloves that use subtle electrical currents to fool our touch receptors.

One such scheme uses jets of compressed air as a simple, but realistic, way to simulate a sense of touch. How these airy illusions affect a user’s emotional state, if at all, was unknown.

Mehdi Ammi of the University of Paris-South in Orsay, France, and his colleagues set out to see if they could find out. They developed a desktop device, consisting of a single nozzle attached to a movable servo, capable of blasting air at different strengths. The nozzle was free to rotate, sweeping across the skin of the hand and forearm to simulate a stroking or petting sensation.


The team tested the device on 16 participants. Each participant experienced 12 different air blasts, varying in intensity, duration and whether the flow was continuous or stuttered. They then rated each blast on three criteria: how positive or negative it felt, whether it made them feel more alert or subdued and whether it felt dominating or submissive.

The team found that changing the movement and intensity of the blast could alter the volunteers’ perception of the air jet. Participants found higher intensity blasts more arousing and more dominant, whereas low-intensity blasts were more pleasant. Furthermore, slowly sweeping, low-intensity blasts were more pleasant than fast motion or a lack of motion. The results were presented at the Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction in Geneva, Switzerland, this week.

Ammi says that such devices might one day be included in telepresence systems, to give people separated by distance a more convincing sense of being together. “When two partners remotely interact through the platform, they feel physical contact as in the real environment,” says Ammi.