Affective Haptics is the emerging area of research which focuses on the design of devices and systems that can elicit, enhance, or influence the emotional state of a human by means of sense of touch.
Affective Haptics has a great potential to impact on the online environments that facilitate contact with others remotely, sense of telepresence, product design, healing and treatment of the mental, emotional, social and physical aspects of the person (e.g. depression, anxiety, autism, etc.).
My colleague Nadia Berthouze from UCLIC, University College London might be the right person to contact... http://www.ucl.ac.uk/uclic/people/n-berthouze