Mapping Emotions to Gestures: Affective Haptics in Human Drone Interaction

Conveying emotions via touch (i.e., affective touch) is a crucial part of social interaction and bonding. Socially assistive robots have widely used affective touch. However, drones being aerial robots, touch has only been explored as input for control, navigation, or command. Thus, this work investigates the potential of affective touch using a perched socially assistive drone. We address two critical topics: (1) using affective touch as a modality with drones and (2) implementing effective touch gestures for emotional communication with drones. In an user study (N = 30), we explored participants’ preferences for interaction modalities and mapped touch gestures to emotions. Results show that touch was the most preferred modality. Afterward, participants selected touch gestures to convey 16 emotions to a drone. We determined which gesture best fits each emotion. Our work highlights the relevance of affective haptics and sheds light on the nature of touch gestures’ emotional conveyance in Human-Drone Interaction.