The adoption of immersive virtual experiences (IVEs) opened new research lines where the
impact of realism is being studied, allowing developers to focus resources on realism factors …

Given the importance of affective touch in human interactions, technology designers are
increasingly attempting to bring this modality to the core of interactive technology. Advances …

The sense of touch is a fundamental aspect of our everyday interactions, especially those
that involve social relationships. Nothing now can (and hopefully will not have to) substitute …

Incorporating the sense of touch through haptics in virtual spaces enables people to
communicate emotions and engage in more naturalistic and meaningful social interactions …

Proper evaluation of realism in immersive virtual experiences is crucial to ensure
optimisation of resources. This way, we can take better decisions while designing realistic …

In recent years, virtual idols have garnered considerable attention because they can perform
activities similar to real idols. However, as they are fictitious idols with nonphysical presence …

This paper reports the effectiveness of a tactile stimulus in a virtual environment to increase
people's motivations during a monotonous task by comparing a touch with only visual stimuli …

Endowing socially interactive virtual agents with the social touch modality could improve
their emotional communication abilities and help them bond with human users. Touch is …

Touch is crucial in communicating different social intents in our everyday lives. However, we
lack methods to bring the capability of touch to express various social signals into VR. This …

In recent years, there has been a growing body of research at the intersection of Mixed
Reality (MR), Empathic Computing (EC), and agent technologies. Despite this trend, a …