Force and motion analyses of the human patting gesture for robotic social touching

Touch often tells us much more than verbal or visual cues ever can. Hence, the human touch plays a very important role in human interactions for expressing their emotions and feelings to others. Understanding this behavior is important in building relationships. This paper is aimed at understanding the patting gesture by analyzing the amount of contact forces on the hand and the angular motions of the finger joints. Finally, the result of this work can be used to set the parameters in developing a humanoid robot that can replicate the patting gesture.