Collaborative robots are increasingly entering industrial contexts and workflows. These contexts are not just locations for production, they are vibrant social and sensory environments. For better or for worse, their entry brings potential to reorganize established tactile and affective dynamics that encompass production processes. There is still much to be learned about these highly contextual and complex dynamics in HRI research and the design of industrial robotics; common approaches in industrial collaborative robotics are restricted to evaluating “effective interface design,” whereas methods that seek to measure “affective touch” have limited application to these industrial domains. This article offers an extended analytical framework and methodological approach to deepen understandings of affect and touch beyond emotional responses to direct human–robot interactions. These distinct contributions are grounded in fieldwork in a glass factory with newly installed collaborative robots. They are illustrated through an ethnographic narrative that traces the emergence and circulation of affect, across material, experiential , and social planes. Beyond this single case, “tangled passages of tactile-affects” is offered as a novel and valuable concept that is distinct from the notion of “affective touch” and holds potential to generate holistic and nuanced understandings of how human experiences can be effected by the introduction of new robots in “the wild.”

We are at a tipping point for digital communication: moving beyond 'ways of seeing' to include 'ways of feeling'.Much as optical technologies transformed sight and the visual (from the telescope and microscope to Google Glass), the rapid expansion in digital touch technologies is set to reconfigure touch and the tactile in significant ways.Advances in haptics, virtual reality, and physiological sensing provide new sensory ways of communicating, as well as new ways to capture the quality of touch.These state-of-the-art digital touch technologies promise to supplement, heighten, extend and reconfigure how people communicate.They are reshaping what and who can be touched, as well as when and how they can be touched, changing existing forms of communication and giving rise to changes in co-located and remote communication between humans, and between humans and robots.These developments sit alongside social discourses of concern and loss, with the digital being associated with the removal of touch from the material sensory landscape (Jewitt et al., 2020).Yet, in our current climate of social distancing and disengaging with touch in our everyday interactions, the promise of the digital becomes increasingly appealing and significant, in re-enabling touch possibilities.As the global population emerges from and comes to terms with their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, these questions become all the more significant.The breadth and interdisciplinary interest in this growing field-across designers, artists, computer scientists, engineers, psychologists and social scientists, with interests in robotics and touch, affective computing, wearables, and digital installations -brings attention to the growing need to engage with 'social' aspects of digital touch, moving beyond technologies and physiological foci to engage with touch practices (Jewitt et al., 2021).We argue for the need to think about touch beyond the physiological act of sensing and perceiving to a more rich and nuanced interpretation of touch that takes account of its emotional and psychological significance, the social, cultural and historical evolution of touch practices in human communication, and approaches to touch of the "lived, social body as a site of meaning-making, where the skin acts as both a boundary between and a point of connection with others" (Karpashevich et al.).Given this landscape, this special issue addresses timely and important questions around the need to think about touch in different ways.This provides a new direction in the field that seeks to address the complexity of human touch and interrogates the limitation of today's haptic devices.Papers in this special issue contribute to understanding this gap by engaging with socio-cultural issues around digital touch communication and identifying new ways to study touch, specifically aiming to explore the nuance and subtlety of touch and an expanded view of touch.

Despite the importance of touch in human–human relations, research in affective tactile practices is in its infancy, lacking in-depth understanding needed to inform the design of remote digital touch communication. This article reports two qualitative studies that explore tactile affective communication in specific social contexts, and the bi-directional creation, sending and interpretation of digital touch messages using a purpose-built research tool, the Tactile Emoticon. The system comprises a pair of remotely connected mitts, which enable users in different locations to communicate through tactile messages, by orchestrating duration and level of three haptic sensations: vibration, pressure and temperature. Qualitative analysis shows the nuanced ways in which 68 participants configured these elements to make meaning from touch messages they sent and received. It points to the affect and emotion of touch, its sensoriality and ambiguity, the significance of context, social norms and expectations of touch participants. Findings suggest key design considerations for digital touch communication, where the emphasis shifts from generating ‘recognizable touches’ to tools that allow people to shape their touches and establish common understanding about their meaning.

Museums increasingly use digital technology to enhance exhibition experiences for families, notably in relation to physically mediated installations for young children through natural user interfaces. Yet little is known about how families and children engage with such installations and the kinds of interactive experiences they engender in museum spaces. This paper addresses a pressing need for research to adopt an analytical focus on the body during such digitally mediated interactions in order to understand how bodily interaction contributes to meaning making in the museum context. It reports an observation study of families and children interacting with a whole-body interface (using Kinect) in the context of an installation in a museum exhibit on rare Chinese paintings. The study shows how the installation design engenders particular forms of bodily interaction, collaboration and meaning making. It also contributes design insights into whole-body interaction installations in museums and public spaces.

The methods of data collection that we choose determine the kinds of data that we have access to, and thus shape analyses. In the context of novel interfaces where different modes, available through the environment and context, mediate the interaction, understanding methodological approaches is critical. This paper examines alternative methods of data collection for exploring student's embodied interaction with novel technology in a learning context. Specifically it analyses non-facilitated interaction in a tangible learning environment, in conjunction with three different post activity interview approaches: semi-structured interviews; semi-structured interview with video prompted recall; and interviews using the technology itself. Findings suggest that the different interview approaches change the nature of information elicited, and that non-facilitated interaction offers clearer insight into interpretation, both in terms of the meaning that emerges through, and is, therefore, embodied in the interaction, and in terms of representation, directly informing design.

Tangible and multitouch technologies offer new opportunities for physically interacting with objects and digital representations, foregrounding the role of the body in interaction and learning. Developing effective methodologies for examining real time cognition and action, and the relationship between embodiment, interaction and learning is challenging. This paper draws on multimodality, with its emphasis on examining the use of multiple semiotic resources for meaning making, to examine the differential use of semiotic resources by pairs of students interacting with a tangible learning environment. Specifically the analysis details the role of body position, gaze, manipulation and speech in shaping interaction. The analysis illustrates the interaction between these modes and 'multimodal action flow', particularly in terms of pace, rhythm and interaction structure, and the implications of this for interaction and the meaning making process.