In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, a Swiss-South Korean research project is attempting to reintroduce contact-free interactions with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI).
Imagine yourself at a coffee shop table with a group of friends or your relatives, when a pandemic is wreaking havoc. In the meantime, you’re talking and laughing while comfortably enjoying your beer. When to drink and when to wear the mask is determined by an adaptive machine that manages guest experiences. Touch between two people has become taboo due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and its enforced distancing steps.
Handshakes and hugs seem to be a thing of the past. In collaboration with Hongik University in Seoul, the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) is attempting to imagine a “touch-free” society that retains a sense of “true” interaction while remaining as risk-free as possible. Intelligent interfaces based on machine learning make this possible.
These interfaces are designed to not only allow people to follow safety precautions including wearing a mask and maintaining a safe distance, but also to fully reimagine public spaces.
Will we be willing to allow more technology in our lives in return for a sense of “normalcy”? The Swiss-South Korean research team is attempting to determine the scope of the possibilities and constraints.
“The aim is to use AI as a tool adapted to daily life, not as a control technology that is ‘behind the scenes,'” says Serena Cangiano, a researcher in charge of SUPSI’s Laboratory of Visual Culture. It is managing the Swiss-South Korean project with the Department of Industrial Design at Hongik University.
The Swiss-Korean research group wants to reinvent public spaces in light of the pandemic’s challenges, making our relationship with technology more appropriate and normal in various social contexts.
The collaborative economy, which is characterized by the exchanging and sharing of physical objects, is constantly clashing with digitalisation. Cars, motorcycles, and scooters, for example, are examples of public private transportation networks that are becoming more popular in Switzerland. Touch is still the primary sense used in these infrastructures, for example, to unlock or move one of the cars.
“In public spaces, we experience shared interfaces all the time,” says Cangiano. “Our research focuses on the design of totally touch-free interfaces and how it is possible to translate and rethink our daily interactions.”
Touch, according to Laura Crucianelli, a cognitive neuroscience researcher, is important for connecting our minds and bodies to the social world. In an article published in the digital journal aeon, the researcher wrote, “Touch is the first sense by which we experience the universe, and the last one to leave us as we reach death’s edge.”
The only sense that expects to be reciprocated is contact. Crucianelli writes that many studies have shown the significance of touch for brain development and have attributed orphans’ behavioral and cognitive deficiencies to a lack of physical affectivity in their early years of life.
The lack of opportunities for contact during the pandemic has been related by some researchers to a rise in psychological issues among the general public.
Is a world without contact very desirable? “Covid-19 has changed our lives: how we work, chat, and eat,” says Hongik University professor Jae Yeop Kim. The pandemic, according to Kim, is pushing us to adapt and use technology like machine learning to create a whole new way of life.
Stemming from this concept, the designers and students in the two universities worked on various projects based on contact-free interaction, such as “contact-free karaoke”; the music stops if one of the participants doesn’t wear a mask or hold the microphone at the right distance.
