Silvia's Brief:

Virtual Touch was inspired by the social distance required to keep the pandemic at bay. During the pandemic, it is difficult to give someone a hug so the project was made as a possible solution. The project is an armband where you can send a “squeeze” from one person to the other over a long distance. The project works when one person presses the button, the other armband then activates and contracts, applying a “squeeze”. The armband consists of a Mckibben Muscle, some bristol, a pump, a button, and two Arduinos to power it. The Mckibben Muscle was woven through the bristol and then attached to the pump. The bristol and Mckibben Muscle were then shaped to form an armband. 

Luke's Brief:

Physical touch is vital for mental, emotional, and physical health. It makes you happier, relieves stress, and helps with human development. During this pandemic, however, people are experiencing a lack of physical intimacy due to social distancing. Hoping to remedy this, Virtual Touch is a remote armband that connects two people at any distance.  

This project started by questioning what physical intimacy actually means to the human body.  From this, it was decided it would be made up of two components, the sending of touch and the receiving of touch. To communicate the concepts through the robot it needed three parts, the ability to read touch, the ability to send information to another wearable, and that wearable having the ability to translate this touch the original robot received. This concept could be put anywhere on the body but it ended up as a wearable for the upper arm.