The Team

Chris Kent is psychologist focussing on the perception of simple sensations across the senses including touch, vision, and hearing and how these are represented in memory [1]. As well as low-level aspects of perception, he researches contextual influences on perception, such as how anxiety affects our cognition [2] and more recently how the visual context affects our interpretation of ambiguous tactile sensations [3]. Chris will be responsible for supervising the behavioural studies and focus groups. 

 

Annie Lywood, founder of Bonnie Binary, is pioneering E-Textile making processes and applications in the healthcare and well-being sector. Her work focuses on exploring the sensory benefits of interactive textiles to enable user-friendly control of technology addressing the key challenges of social connectivity and emotional well-being. Annie will facilitate the co-design workshops with focus groups, manage the making of the E-Textile prototypes, work with the team to test the early stage products and help document the project. 

 

Jonathan Rossiter is head of the Soft Robotics group and leading innovator of soft systems for robotics, human interaction, wearable assistance and healthcare.  These include development of novel affect haptic interaction devices including the Tickler [4] and natural tactile stimulation through skin stretching [5] and the creation of the TacTip soft tactile sensing system [6].  The Soft Robotics laboratory provides state-of-the-art actuation and sensing technologies and fabrication facilities for the Tactile-Textile project. 

 

Emily Crowe is a psychologist interested in perception, attention and memory. Emily will take the lead with behavioural experiments and focus groups.

 

Emily Ball is a MSc Experimental Psychology student whose project focusses on understanding emotional reactions to interactive textiles.

 

Alice Haynes is a PhD student in soft robotics. Alice and Annie will work closely together to develop E-textile prototypes.

 

Yihua Zhu is a MSc in Robotics student whose project focusses on linking remote people through physical empathy.

 

[1]Stochastic accumulation of feature information in perception and memory, Kent, C, Guest, D, Adelman, JS, Lamberts, K, Frontiers in Psychology, 2014 

[2 State anxiety and information processing: A 7.5% carbon dioxide challenge studyEasey, K, Caitling, J, Kent, C, Crouch, C, Jackson, S, Munafo, M, Attwood, A, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25:2, 732-738, 2018 

[3] Ambiguities of affective haptics: Scratching the surface, Knoop, E, Rossiter, J, Kent, C, manuscript in preparation 

[4]The Tickler: A Compliant Wearable Tactile Display for Stroking and Tickling.  Knoop LE, Rossiter J.  Proc. CHI EA ’15, p. 1133-1138. 2015. 

[5]A wearable skin-stretching tactile interface for human-robot and human-human Communication.  Haynes A, Simons M, Helps T, Nakamura Y, Rossiter J, Robot and Autonomy Letter (to appear) 2018 

[6]The TacTip Family: Soft Optical Tactile Sensors with 3D-Printed Biomimetic Morphologies. Ward-Cherrier B, Pestell N, Cramphorn L, Winstone B, Giannaccini ME, Rossiter J, Lepora NF, Soft Robotics 5:2, 2018