4/5/2016

Peoplefeelweirdabouttouchingrobotbutts,researchersfind|TechCrunch

People feel weird about touching robot butts, researchers nd

Posted 1 hour ago by Devin Coldewey

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How would you feel if a robot asked you to touch its butt? Maybe it sounds like a silly
question (actually, theres no maybe about it), but as robots proliferate and
anthropomorphize, its actually something that needs to be considered. So scientists at
Stanford considered it.
The study, to be presented soon but previewed by IEEE Spectrum, is entitled Touching a
Mechanical Body: Tactile Contact With Intimate Parts of a Human-Shaped Robot is
Physiologically Arousing and really, the title says it all. Though it should be noted that
arousing only indicates agenerally heightened state of awareness or attention.

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The researchers sat volunteers at a table with a Nao humanoid robot reclining casually on
it. They were told (by the robot, in fact) that it was a vocabulary exercise focusing on terms
for body parts. Volunteers were told by the bot to, for instance, touch my ear using their
dominant hand, while the non-dominant hand remained on a skin conductance sensor
that loosely monitored their physical state.
When asked to touch high accessibility areas places we normally touch on other
people, like shoulders and elbows volunteers did so without hesitation or agitation. But
low accessibility areas this would be the robots butt and where its junk would be
produced delay and that arousal we talked about. You really ought to watch the video:

Touching a Robot Can Elicit Physiological Arousal in Humans

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Its not that robots are going to start propositioning humans and making them
uncomfortable, but this is the kind of thing that must be taken into account when
designing an interface in this case, the robot itself, its gestures and posture.
A robot isnt a person, but because its shaped like one and designed to act and speak like
one, we imbue it with a sort of temporary humanity when we interact with it. Phones dont
look like people, so they dont have butts, or if they do, no one seems to care that were
touching them all the time (HTC phones used to have chins, though). But I personally
guarantee you will bump into a robot and nd yourself saying excuse me some time in
the next decade. Several of you have probably already apologized to the Roomba after
stepping on it.
The paper, by Jamy Li, Wendy Ju and Byron Reeves, will be presented at the International
Communication Associations Annual Conference in June.
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