論文

1．はじめに本特集において紹介されてきたように，ハプティクスの計測提示技術の進化は目覚ましく，さまざまな応用領域に適したインタフェースの設計開発が可能になってきている。一方で，これらの技術が今後社会に普及し人々の日常に浸透するためには，ハプティクスが利用者に対して具体

Biofeedback is a well-known form of therapy in which the patient receives sensory and auditory input on their physiology to help them reflect on, recognize, and be aware of their own state in order to improve their cognitive and emotional functioning. In our approach, a user's self-avatar is generated based on their physiological state, specifically their heart rate and electrodermal activity. Moreover, based on self-reported anxiety symptoms, we investigate if the biofeedback self-immersive avatar can help reduce stress levels.

The Malleable-Self Experience comprises the integration of the visual element of virtual reality (VR) with the whole-body haptic sensations of the Synesthesia X1 haptic chair. The goal is to induce a provocative experience that expands one's understanding of the self by creating a malleable perception of the body image. We explore the effects of visual and whole-body haptic integration on augmenting body image during dynamic transformations of visual representations of the body in VR. We design the plausibility of these perceptual augmentations using a specific sequence of multisensory events: (1) establishing body ownership of a virtual body anchored in the same self-located space as the participant, (2) separating the virtual body to hover above the participant's physical body, enhanced by accompanying haptic stimuli to increase proprioceptive uncertainty, and (3) transforming the virtual body with integrated visuo-haptic stimuli to sustain perceptual congruency.

As neurodivergent cases in children are steadily increasing, we are also seeing increased awareness regarding personalized neurological development and efforts towards social inclusion. Children struggling with these conditions should engage in education curricula custom-tailored and personalized for their individual needs. In this initial work, we describe the first steps of the development of an interactive system that created a multi-sensory environment embedded into a participatory performance to help neurodivergent children learn about emotions. We first report on the co-design process and research insights from our work integrating haptic technology and neurodivergent children's emotion learning activity. Then we report on a study in which 28 children were involved in testing the implementation of our system and share our insights that we gained about designing haptic interventions for neurodivergent children and the collaborative process with their instructors and other related parties.

Transcale is a VR experience where the users can change the body scale smoothly while walking. By continuously modifying their perceived body scale, this interaction method provides the users to explore the virtual world from various points of view from a dwarf to a giant.

The concept of cultural empathy, which entails the ability to empathize with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds, has garnered attention across multiple disciplines. However, there has been limited research focusing on the utilization of immersive experiences to deliver journalistic encounters that foster cultural empathy. In this regard, we propose the development of Virtual Journalist, a virtual reality (VR) system that immerses users in the role of a journalist, allowing them to consume 360° video documentaries and capture moments that evoke cultural empathy through photography. Furthermore, this system integrates both cognitive and affective dimensions of empathy by linking physiological data, namely electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate variability (HRV), to the captured photographs. Our findings suggest that the impact of Virtual Journalist varies based on the user's cultural background, and we have observed that empathic accuracy can be achieved by combining user-generated photographs with corresponding physiological data.

Although various haptic devices have been proposed so far, most of them are limited to use in laboratory or indoor environments, because such haptic devices are wired to external equipment for power supply and control. This can be a critical issue, particularly when using them in freely moving situations. In this study, we proposed a self-contained haptic device called Waylet for park-scale interactions. Waylets can provide translational and rotational pseudo-forces via asymmetric vibrations. To demonstrate the feasibility of our concept, we demonstrate an intuitive haptic navigation system in a park-scale mixed-reality environment with haptic rendering.

The ability to estimate compliance is an important human skill related to the tactile sense. When the perception of compliance is mediated by haptic devices, the interaction with objects usually takes place through active exploration from the subject. In this paper, we present a wearable haptic device for transmitting information about object compliance through passive touch, meaning that stimuli are generated by an external agent rather than by user motion. More precisely, the dynamics describing the object indentation is reproduced on the user's forearm in the form of decoupled cues representing applied force and surface displacement. The development of such a device has a twofold purpose. Firstly, it allows the study of the human capacity for processing decoupled information to deduce object compliance. Secondly, it makes possible to convey object compliance to someone who is not performing the object indentation. This is especially important in contexts like telemedicine and human-robot collaboration.Users' perception of stiffness, force, and displacement were estimated. Then, a two-phase experiment was carried out to compare the proposed approach with the state of the art. Results of the experimental campaign revealed the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Users were able to discriminate and order objects with different compliance with a success rate 9% greater than the one obtained exploiting state of the art strategies reproducing only forces.

© 2018 The Author(s). Body ownership can be modulated through illusory visual-tactile integration or visual-motor synchronicity/contingency. Recently, it has been reported that illusory ownership of an invisible body can be induced by illusory visual-tactile integration from a first-person view. We aimed to test whether a similar illusory ownership of the invisible body could be induced by the active method of visual-motor synchronicity and if the illusory invisible body could be experienced in front of and facing away from the observer. Participants observed left and right white gloves and socks in front of them, at a distance of 2 m, in a virtual room through a head-mounted display. The white gloves and socks were synchronized with the observers' actions. In the experiments, we tested the effect of synchronization, and compared this to a whole-body avatar, measuring self-localization drift. We observed that visual hands and feet were sufficient to induce illusory body ownership, and this effect was as strong as using a whole-body avatar.

ImageFlowing is a 'living' photograph that reproduces the biometric signs of the photographer. Viewers can feel how the photographer felt through photographer's breathing, heartbeats and skin temperature. We extend a two-dimensional picture into a multi-modal experience, aiming at creating a tighter emotional link between the viewer and the photographer.