Interactive Robot Torso: Now You Can Hug Yourself

Hugs are an important part of good health. You know that, right? Hugs help reduce stress, they lower blood pressure, and they even slow down aging. It’s true! In this hug article I wrote back in 2010, I listed a bunch of benefits that hugging gives us.

Hugs flow in abundance in social media, and although some people think they are lame, I think they’re so much fun. It’s true that social media hugs aren’t real hugs, but when they come from special friends, they feel almost the same. I even wrote about the different kinds of Twitter hugs and what they reveal about us. However, what if you want to feel the actual embrace of a hug more often? Even better yet, what if you want to learn how to hug yourself? That is apparently the concept behind the Sense-Roid robot-hugging torso. And, yes, this comes from Japan (You already guessed that, right?).

In scientific language, this allows for emotional haptic communication with yourself. In regular language, this is a jacket that breathes up and down like a real person’s chest when you squish up against it. I’m probably not explaining this right, so you can watch the video below for the full explanation. According to you YouTube, “Tactile sensors detect the user’s caressing motion, and a tactile jacket with vibrators and artificial muscles reflect the caressing motion back to the user.” I get the whole self-love, self-embrace thing, but the guy in this video looks like he’s making out with himself. #justsayin

Via: [Popsci] [Physorg]