Seminar: “Robot Touch / Touching Robotics: Towards an Integrative Understanding of Human-Robot Touch Interactions”

Louise Kirsch

The multifaceted roles of social touch

Abstract: At the boundary between the body, the environment and others, touch is a key path for social interactions. Indeed, touch enables the transmission of pro-social and emotional signals that cannot be communicated through other sensory modalities. In this presentation, I will briefly put together the results of our recent studies shedding some lights on: (i) the crucial role of touch in communicating emotions, (ii) the role of touch in buffering feelings of social isolation and rejection, especially in times of forced social distancing; and (iii) ways to compensate for a lack of touch. Altogether, these studies highlight the multifaceted role of social touch, and the necessity for future studies to investigate further the underlying mechanisms of social touch perception, also depending on context.
Bio: Louise Kirsch is an associate professor and researcher in cognitive neuroscience at Université Paris Cité (Paris, France). She conducts her research on multisensory perception and social cognition at the Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition (INCC). She is particularly interested in studying the different facets of social touch: as a form of social communication, but also as a contributor to self-awareness.

Sarah McIntyre

Mapping the physical and social domains of interpersonal touch

Abstract: Interpersonal touch is a critical part of our social lives, and the nervous system is organised to process touch inputs and facilitate their social interpretation. The skin-to-skin mechanical techniques we use during social touch interactions are shaped by our physical bodies and the environment. Here we investigate the interpretations and associations of social touch with the physical features of touch stimuli. When prompted with social scenarios, touch expressions are complex, and dynamic, with repeating and changing elements. The distribution of measured contact characteristics is broader than what is typically tested in psychophysics and neuroscience studies, but small differences in touch delivery can still discriminate the social message being conveyed. When we independently manipulate contact area, velocity, axis of motion and force we evoke a wide array of sensory descriptors, imagined social scenarios, and complex emotional interactions. Our sensory-descriptor maps suggest new labels that should be considered in quantitative lab studies. Finally, neural responses to the contact characteristics present in social touch reveal differences among mechanoreceptor sub-classes in the capacity to discriminate socially relevant features at a functional time-scale.
Bio: Dr Sarah McIntyre completed her PhD at the University of Sydney in 2014, followed by postdoctoral positions at Neuroscience Research Australia and at Linköping University, Sweden. In 2021, she established her research group at Linköping University to investigate the neurophysiological and biomechanical basis of touch sensation. Her lab focuses on the human peripheral nervous system, using microneurography to record the responses of individual touch-sensitive neurons. The McIntyre group has developed a suite of tools for naturalistic and programmable touch delivery with simultaneous measurement of skin mechanics and perceptual judgments, combined with cutting-edge computational analysis techniques. This suite of methodologies allows high precision mapping of mechanical inputs to neural and perceptual responses. A key focus is on characterising and understanding the full range of touch inputs that humans experience in the world, and how the nervous system can process this huge variety of signals to produce functional outcomes.

Lea Laura Nørregaard

Touching You, Touching Me, Touching You… Negotiations of the Reciprocity and Ambiguity of Touch in Three Haptic Biomachines

Abstract: “I wanted to catch a picture of him in my fingers,” writes the deafblind author Helen Keller to describe her encounter with her dog (1908). Touching someone never means simply receiving tactile information about them; it always already means changing and affecting them. This complex reciprocity of touch is at the very center of this presentation. We* analyze three cases that, each in their own way, negotiate entanglements of human and artificial touch: 1. Artificial skin pads developed in the context of computer engineering research, 2. A perspiring sculpture named Anima made by Argentinian artist Paula Gaetano Adi, and 3. Haptic intimacy devices run with robotic technology called Kissinger and Huggy Pajama. The presentation introduces these cases as haptic biomachines and focuses on close analysis to begin unfolding questions of how they negotiate our understanding of touch. The analyses rely on an interdisciplinary aesthetic framework, building on phenomenological and transmaterialist theories and histories of touch. A main question in the presentation is: What forms of reduction of the complexity and reciprocity of touch are operating in each biomachine? Touch, we argue, is something that complexly unfolds in and along various dimensions, some of which are reduced in robotic simulations. This, however, does not make the biomachines less interesting. Rather than dismissing them as insufficient imitations of the real, we propose reading them as material-discursive sites where touch is reimagined and reconfigured.
*I use ‘we’ because the presentation relies on a collectively written article. I therefore present not only in my own name, but also in the name of Mette-Marie Zacher Sørensen, Associate Professor at Aarhus University.
Bio: Lea Laura Nørregaard Michelsen is an independent researcher and communicator. She has a PhD from Aesthetics and Culture (Aarhus University) and works at the intersection of aesthetics and technology with a particular attention to topics of identity and gender. She employs interdisciplinary aesthetic frameworks and queerfeminist methodologies. Earlier she worked at the National Gallery of Denmark and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde. For more, visit www.lealaura.art. Contact: lealaura@live.dk

Evgenios Vlachos

Toward a Context-Sensitive Framework for Appropriate Robot Touch

Abstract: Both passive and active robot touch are highly context sensitive and often yield contradictory responses, particularly when comparing affective and instrumental uses or reactive versus proactive behaviors. We propose a multi-dimensional framework that conceptualizes the appropriateness of robot touch as something that is negotiated in the interaction, rather than designed in advance as a static property of the robot. The framework integrates four interdependent dimensions: the physical (e.g., force, duration, body location); the social (e.g., roles, norms, interactional setting); the psychological (e.g., comfort, predictability, emotional interpretation); and the ethical (e.g., consent, autonomy, vulnerability). We argue that users evaluate robot touch through interactional meaning-making processes, attributing intention, social roles, and moral standing to the robot. As a result, identical robotic touch behaviors -even towards the same person- may be perceived differently depending on context, user characteristics, and expectations. By synthesizing empirical findings and highlighting tensions across dimensions, the framework helps explain cases in which touch is experienced as inappropriate despite meeting technical safety criteria. As this work is ongoing, we hope to identify how these dimensions can be operationalized into practical design and evaluation methods, and to establish a shared framework that supports collaboration across disciplines when addressing robot touch.
Bio: Evgenios Vlachos received the MSc degree in electronic automation from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece (2009), and the MA (2012) and PhD (2016) degrees in human centered communication and informatics from Aalborg University, Denmark.  Then he became a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University in a social robotics project supported by the Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark where he does research on social robotics and human-robot interaction, and a Research Librarian at the University Library of Southern Denmark, leading the Research Data Management Support Team.

Mark Paterson

What kinds of touch are we engineering in Human-Robot Interaction? The place of the ‘social’ in mediated social touch

Abstract: What kinds of touch are we expecting, imagining, hoping for, even fearing, in Human-Robot Interaction? The idea of ‘digital touch’ or ‘mediated social touch’ has been gathering momentum in design, engineering and robotics. It builds from, and extends, existing haptic technologies that were originally designed to offer the sense of presence of another object or person at a distance. But the technology has constraints. The promise of high-fidelity desktop haptics for interacting with others was never fully realized. Meta’s Metaverse showed, in the words of Zuckerberg, ‘haptics is hard’, before petering out. It is relatively unsophisticated mobile haptics that has kept the ‘social’ aspect of mediated social touch thriving over the years. The explicit aspiration of Haans & Ijsselsteijn (2006) in an early definition of mediated social touch was to “enhance feelings of social presence and emotional closeness”. Human-robot interaction is waking up to the significance of the social aspect of touch, for reasons including the establishment of trust, the fostering of empathy, and the promotion of pro-social behaviors between human users and social robots. But what is the explicitly social aspect of ‘mediated social touch’ exactly, and how is this being achieved in robotics? More importantly, what is at stake here for human users and the ‘social brain’? This talk will be illustrated with brief examples of past and present experiments in this area, from haptic interfaces, experiments in interaction design, and a more substantial case study of the possibilities of affective touch within human-robot interaction.
Bio: Mark Paterson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. He has an interest in the history and science of bodily sensation, and technologies of the senses. He is author of books including The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (Routledge, 2007), Seeing with the Hands: Blindness, Vision and Touch After Descartes (Edinburgh UP, 2016), How We Became Sensorimotor: Movement, Measurement, Sensation (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and most recently Affective Touching: Neurobiology and Technological Applications (Cambridge UP, 2025). He is co-editor of Touching Space, Placing Touch (Routledge, 2012), and of a special issue of ACM Transactions in Human-Robot Interaction (2023) with Guy Hoffman and Caroline Yan Zheng, ‘Designing the Robot Body: Critical Perspectives on Affective Embodied Interaction’.

Amy Winters

Uneasy Touch: Soft Robotic Materials Mediating Discomfort

Abstract: Active materials draw us in. They feel life-like, uncanny, even unsettling. Compelling, but not always beautiful or usable. Rather than resolving this tension, what if we design with it? What if unease becomes a gateway to richer affect? This talk introduces uneasy touch through the lens of soft robotics and uncomfortable materiality, a design approach that resists the emphasis on usability, ease, and control in interaction design. Rather than treating discomfort, irritation, or awkwardness as experiences to avoid, these qualities are treated as generative, embedded in material encounters. Within soft robotics, materials are not passive substrates but active mediators of experience, shaping how touch is felt. Drawing on examples such as fur-like liquid crystal actuators, wet-responsive surfaces, and tactile magnetic forms, the work examines how these materials produce encounters that are both compelling and unsettling. These interactions often sit at the edge of the uncanny, where ambiguity, curiosity, and unease emerge through direct engagement with dynamic material behaviour. The talk considers how unease can open up richer forms of interaction, not as problems to resolve, but as points of entry into more complex affective and embodied encounters. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing discussions on how robotic touch becomes meaningful in aesthetic and embodied contexts.
Bio: Amy Winters is an Assistant Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), working across design, soft robotics and advanced materials. Her research explores how dynamic, responsive materials can be integrated into interactive systems, with a focus on temporal behaviour and embodied interaction. She holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, trained at Central Saint Martins, and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at TU/e. Based at the Material Aesthetics Lab, her work bridges interaction design, materials science, and engineering through research-through-design and hands-on prototyping. Her work is published at CHI, DIS, TEI, and Nature Reviews Bioengineering, and she delivered a plenary at the Embodied Intelligence Conference 2026, with invited talks at IEEE RoboSoft and IASDR. She has served as Design Competition Chair at IEEE RO-MAN and Exhibition Chair at Textile Intersections. Her work has been exhibited at Dutch and Milan Design Weeks.

Caroline Yan Zheng

TBA

Abstract: TBA
Bio: TBA

Isabel Neto

Fostering Inclusion among Mixed-Ability Children through Soft Robots

Abstract: Human touch is universal, emotional, and fundamental to social bonding. In educational contexts, touch supports children’s social development through peer interaction and play. As robots become present in schools, an important question emerges: how might touch-based interactions with robots influence children’s development and relationships?. Despite its potential for socio-emotional development with children, robotic touch remains largely underexplored. Soft robotic skins enable robots to sense tactile interaction, express affect, provide comfort, and support social experiences through touch. Touch-based group activities with robots may therefore help bridge differences in ability and background while fostering inclusion, empathy, and positive peer relationships.. In the presentation, we will share our research on exploring robotic touch in children-robot interactions to foster inclusion in group activities between diverse groups of children. 
Bio: Isabel Neto is an Assistant Professor of Faculdade de Ciências , Universidade de Lisboa, and a researcher of Lasige Lab and has a PhD in Computer Science. Her research lies at the intersection of accessibility, education, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interaction to advance new robot modalities for inclusion in heterogeneous groups of children, regardless of ability, background, or culture contexts. Prior to her PhD, Isabel was a senior manager at a telecommunication company for 20+ years. Her work is primarily focused on children (with and without disabilities) and how robot experiences affect their group dynamics. Some key topics: 1. how children perceive robot’s exclusion and how it affects their basic needs and prosocial behaviour ? 2. Community engagement and participatory design in school settings, in mixed-visual ability and neurodiverse classrooms. 3. Strategies for fostering inclusion, by balancing participation and ensuring every child’s voice is heard, using social robots that are accessible to children regardless of their ability. More information at her site https://isabelcaniconeto.github.io/site/.

Jacqueline Borgstedt

When robots feel alive: Bio-inspired tactile cues for zoomorphic social robots

Abstract: Touch plays a fundamental role in initiating and maintaining social relationships between humans and is vital for psychological and physical wellbeing. In the absence of physical human-human or human-animal contact, socially assistive robots have been proposed as alternative sources of companionship and social touch, and as potential interventions to support well-being. However, touch-based interactions with robots remain comparatively limited. While touch between humans or animals involves varied haptic cues, including body temperature, heartbeat, breathing, and purring, interactions with social robots are often restricted to perceiving the robot’s movements, sounds, or shell. In this talk, I discuss a series of laboratory and in-the-wild studies exploring whether zoomorphic social robots can be augmented with life-like tactile cues to emulate some of the comforting qualities of social touch between humans and animals. The work explores how bio-inspired tactile cues influence user perception, emotional engagement, perceived life-likeness, and interaction quality in the context of stress exposure, while also raising broader questions surrounding biological plausibility of bio-inspired tactile cues. The talk concludes by critically reflecting on whether increasingly life-like tactile interaction is always desirable, or whether bio-inspired haptic cues may also introduce forms of uncanniness and discomfort.
Bio: Dr. Jacqueline Borgstedt is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Social Brain Sciences Group and Lecturer at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at ETH Zürich. With an interdisciplinary background in experimental psychology and human-computer interaction, her research bridges theories and methodologies from both disciplines to investigate how socially assistive robots can be designed to support mental wellbeing. Jacqueline completed her PhD in Computing Science and Psychology at the University of Glasgow as part of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Socially Intelligent Artificial Agents. Her doctoral research explored how bio-inspired tactile cues, such as warmth, heartbeat, and purring, shape human-robot interaction, perceived emotional support and perceptions of social robots. More broadly, her work examines affective, embodied, and touch-based interaction with robotic technologies through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.

Marco Donnarumma

Bio: Marco Donnarumma is an artist, performer, stage director, and theorist weaving together contemporary performance, new media art, and interactive computer music since the early 2000s. He is internationally acknowledged for solo performances, stage productions, and installations that defy genres, and where the body becomes a morphing language to speak critically of ritual, power, and technology. Donnarumma holds a Ph.D. in performing arts, computing and body theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. He is an Associate Researcher at the Intelligent Instruments Lab, Reykjavik and was a fellow at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Academy for Theater and Digitality.

Bojana Romic

Bio: Bojana Romic (Ph.D., Phil.) is an Assistant Professor in Media and Communication Studies. She is the co-director of the master’s programme in Media and Communication at K3, Malmö University, Sweden. She also co-directs the MEDEA research lab in Malmö – a transdisciplinary media lab where researchers and artists address cultural and societal challenges through experiments, installations, and interventions.
Bojana is currently writing the monograph Visual Representations of AI in popular culture: myths, imaginaries, and science communication, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Andrea Tesanovic

Bio: Andrea Tešanović is a PhD Fellow at the University of Southern Denmark (Institute of Culture and Language / SDU Biorobotics), where she conducts transdisciplinary research on human–robot interaction from a humanities perspective. Drawing on science fiction literature, media art, and soft robotics, she explores how aesthetics, narrative, and material design shape the conditions for care and companionship between humans and robots — with a particular focus on non-anthropomorphic robotics and touch-based interaction.

Kassandra Wellendorf

Bio: Kassandra Wellendorf is a film director, a media artist, and a Teaching Associate Professor in visual culture at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on cultural imaginations of technology and the role of digital technologies in our everyday life. She works primarily with practice-based research, combining sensory ethnography, cultural studies, and filmic methods. She has produced a number of internationally recognized films and interactive installations on the fleeting transitions between public and private space (Close 2002; Invisible 2003; Sleeping Obstacles 2010; Insideout2400 2012, Handmade Memories 2014, HomeCTRL 2025). She is currently working on a documentary film Remote Control about the downside of misuse of smart technologies. Together with Kristin Veel she has published articles on smart technology in homes, e.g “HOMECTRL: An Example of Practice-Based Artistic Research as a Methodology” in Surveillance and Society, Vol. 20 No. 4 (2022).

Kathrin Maurer

Bio: Kathrin Maurer (PhD; Dr.Phil.) is Professor of Humanities and Technology at the University of Southern Denmark (Odense, DK). Her research focuses on bio-machines, surveillance technology, drones, and visual culture. She is the PI of the projects “The Aesthetics of Bio-Machines and the Question of Life” (The Velux Foundations, 2023-2027) and “Drone Imaginaries and Communities” (Independent Research Foundation Denmark, 2020-2023). She is also the leader of the University of Southern Denmark’s Center for Culture and Technology. She is the author of the monograph The Sensorium of the Drone and Communities (MIT Press, 2023), and she co-edited the collected volumes Drone Imaginaries: The Power of Remote Vision (Manchester University Press, 2020) and Visualizing War: Emotions, Technologies, Communities (Routledge, 2018). She also has a background in German studies and has published on 19th-century visual culture, historical prose, and travel literature.