MA dissertation : Interactive Digital Media

Tactile sensations are more powerful than language in communication; can people communicate with touch in telepresence? And how can touch be stimulated by a machine to reflect people's feelings? Haptic communication strengthens the possibilities of remote physical interactions of people. Local users can feel the presence of human bodies in distant places. The level of digital signal in vision technology is much higher than the digital signal in haptic equivalent; can both vision and touch be combined in remote haptic devices? These questions are addressed through discussion in this dissertation; the visual sensors do not conflict with the tactile sensors. Actually, they have an inter-modality based relationship. Physical factors of haptic stimulus will be presented in this dissertation, based upon the literature on haptic stimuli. The emotional tactile expression is also outlined.