An entertainment system using thermal feedback for increasing communication and social skills

Abstract

Although social skills are important, to increase these skills is difficult. In this paper we propose an experimental system that lets a user "feel" the appropriate distance between him/her and another person in order for social interaction to take place in an optimal setting. We created wearable thermal devices that transmit thermal information to the person wearing them and linked them to an edutainment system called "Thermo- society". "Thermo-society" is a system that creates thermal sensory spots around people in an open space. Thermal sensory spots are generated based on the knowledge of proxemics. Through an experiment, we analyze people's behavior in the space. As a result of the analysis, we estimate the average distance between two users in the same group is 1.45meters. We noticed in our experiment that people, when playing Thermo-society, allow strangers to come in personal distance in 44.4% of the cases, which suggests that our system increases the potential for social interactions. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.