philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

From Stress-Relief Vibration Patterns to Haptic Emojis, USC Researchers Personalize the Sense of Touch With AI

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Although personalized haptic feedback could create more intuitive and accessible user experiences, efficiently identifying each person’s preferred vibration patterns has remained a longstanding challenge.

USC haptics researcher Heather Culbertson aimed to close this gap with her latest study.

Led by Culbertson, the research team developed an algorithm called Vibrotactile Preference Learning (VPL), a system that efficiently learns an individual’s preferred vibration patterns for producing a desired emotional response. ...

Individual differences in physiology, including factors such as skin thickness and the density of touch receptors, as well as differences in psychology can significantly influence how people perceive the same haptic signal. This phenomenon is called tactile subjectivity. ...

The researchers created an algorithm called Vibrotactile Preference Learning (VPL), which uses an active querying strategy to identify a user’s preferred vibration pattern in as few as 40 rounds of pairwise comparisons. By comparison, traditional methods may require nearly 200 comparisons to identify a favorite among just 20 vibration signals.

The system first represents each vibration using four key parameters in what researchers call a four-dimensional space: intensity, motor balance (texture), rhythm (pulse frequency) and grain (pulse duty cycle).

VPL then uses a Gaussian process preference model to estimate a user’s preferences across that four-dimensional space. Rather than asking users to compare every possible vibration pair, the algorithm intelligently selects the next pair expected to provide the most useful information. ...

The research could also enable more personalized forms of digital communication through “haptic emojis” — customized vibration patterns that convey emotions such as affection, comfort or excitement. The technology could even create unique haptic signatures for different contacts, allowing users to recognize whether a call is from a partner, parent or close friend without looking at a screen.

See the full story here: https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2026/07/from-stress-relief-vibration-patterns-to-haptic-emojis-usc-researchers-personalize-the-sense-of-touch-with-ai/?hash=gmXCHEqg86001