Haptic based emotional communication system in Second Life

The sense of touch has much importance in technology-mediated human emotion communication and interaction. Many researchers around the world are aiming to leverage the sense of touch in the communication medium between multiuser 3D virtual world and real environment. Driven by the motivation, we explored the possibilities of integrating haptic interactions with Linden Lab's multiuser online virtual world, Second Life. We enhanced the open source Second Life viewer client in order to facilitate the communications of emotional feedbacks such as human touch, encouraging pat and comforting hug to the participating users through real-world haptic stimulation.