Skip to main content
Home

Sensory Perception & Interaction, Research Group

University of British Columbia

Main navigation
  • Home
  • People
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Get involved
  • Find us
  • Photo Gallery
  • Lab Spaces & Resources
  • Products of Research
Start Year
2020

Given the rich and diverse forms of communication within human-human and human-animal interactions, this project investigates how to design affective haptic robot behaviours that are expressive, providing impressions of animacy, personality, and life within human-robot interactions.

SPIN People
Devyani McLaren
Bereket Guta
Laura Cang
Preeti Vyas
Publications
Guta, B., & MacLean, K. E. (2026). “RoboBunting: Building Social, Affective Expressiveness through Bilateral Force Exchange.” ACM Transactions on Human–Robot Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1145/3807949
Witkower, Z., Cang, L. X., Bucci, P., MacLean, K. E., and Tracy, J. L. (2026). "Human psychophysiology is influenced by physical touch with a “breathing” robot". Emotion.
Vyas, P., Guta, B., Zhou, T. G., Himam, N. N., Uusberg, A., & MacLean, K. E. (2026). Haptically Experienced Animacy Facilitates Emotion Regulation: A Theory-Driven Investigation. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. Pg 1-14. 2026.
Tags
affect
design process
design tool
force feedback display
human-robot interaction
interaction design
rendering emotion
tactile display
robot design
touch sensing
  • Sensory Perception and Interaction Research Group
  • Department of Computer Science
  • University of British Columbia
  • Prof. Karon MacLean
User menu
  • Log in