Tickle Salon, virtual map of the body

Subsequently, the robot continues its exploration, using the formerly gathered information in its motion behaviour. By doing so, it gently strokes the surface of the body while at the same time, the robot creates and updates its imagination of the shape of that body. A monitor in front of the bed, displays current images of the discovered regions.
In a later stage the map could also be used for interaction with the user, to indicate his or her preferences, on which parts of the body to be caressed or not.
In this installation the concept of "feeling" is ambiguous: on the one hand there is the feeling of the person who experiences the stimulation of the skin, and on the other is the feeling of the robot whose only sense is a feeler and which tries to form a spatial image of the body by means of touch.

review text by Leigh Anderson for Popular Science, November 2003

on-line article (in dutch) by Paul Groot

tickle salon driessens & verstappen