Design and Validation of a Lightweight 1D CNN for Affective Touch Classification in Soft Plush Companions

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.16196v1
• Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:20:05 GMT
• Title: Design and Validation of a Lightweight 1D CNN for Affective Touch Classification in Soft Plush Companions
• Abstract summary: Soft, sensorized companions offer a physically safe and emotionally intuitive interface for socially assistive technologies.<n>This study presents a complete open-source dilated real-based framework for the development and validation of deep learning models for affective touch recognition in soft interactive companions.
• Score: 59.49967357689445
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Soft, sensorized companions offer a physically safe and emotionally intuitive interface for socially assistive technologies, yet their deformability and multichannel tactile sensing complicate the robust interpretation of human affect. This study presents a complete open-source MATLAB-based framework for the development and validation of compact deep learning models for affective touch recognition in soft interactive companions. As a primary contribution, a diverse FAIR-compliant dataset of 1326 labelled gesture sequences collected from 25 participants spanning children, teenagers, and adults is made publicly available, providing a reusable resource for future research in affective touch recognition. Through systematic architecture and hyperparameter exploration across 468 CNN models, the study identifies compact dilated one-dimensional convolutional neural networks (1D CNNs) as the most effective solution, with a 13.2k-parameter model achieving 75% test accuracy and 85% mean leave-one-subject-out cross-validation accuracy. Theoretical inference-time analysis shows that quantized deployment requires 3.2 MMAC per window, compatible with 20 Hz real-time operation on the target microcontroller. PC-based real-time simulation with the physical toy streaming sensor data demonstrates that the CNN resolves subtle social touches that the previous heuristic system failed to detect, whereas high-force negative interactions are captured more reliably by trivial threshold-based logic. The resulting hybrid inference pipeline - instantaneous heuristic filtering followed by CNN-based nuanced gesture classification - is proposed as the embedded deployment strategy. The study demonstrates that emotionally meaningful, privacy-preserving touch interpretation is computationally feasible for direct embedding within soft therapeutic companions, with hardware integration addressed in a forthcoming study.

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