Traditional teleconferencing systems have enabled remote communications via audiovisual modalities. However, in real life, human touch such as encouraging pat plays a fundamental role to physical and emotional communication between persons. This paper presents a synchronous haptic teleconferencing system with touch interaction to convey affection and intimacy. We present a preliminary prototype called HugMe. In this system, two remote users could see as well as touch each other. Keywords Teleconferencing, haptics
Jongeun Cha, Mohamad A. Eid, Ahmad Barghout, A. S.