The devices measures skin conductance, a measure of physiological arousal, and the participant’s reaction time. The participants were also more hesitant to touch the robot in what could be considered its intimate parts, based on the humans’ response times, the researchers said.
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“People feel more alert, aware or attentive (this was what we measured as physiological arousal) because they may feel that the experience is awkward or uncanny when touching “private” rather than “public” areas of the robot”, one of the researchers, Jamy Li, told Andrew Griffin at The Independent.
‘Our work shows that robots are a new form of media that is particularly powerful. Li and his team of fellow researchers used one from Aldebaran Robotics in Paris, the small humanoid NAO robot, for the robot in their experiments.
The researchers plan to present their findings in more detail at the International Communication Association in Japan this June.
Until now not much was known about the link between human beings touching robots. In doing so, we might be less inclined to treat robots like a metal trash can, and more like a … friend?
The robot asked the volunteers to touch different body parts of a robot using their dominant hand.
Robots might be non-living, but they will still elicit responses in humans. Four female and six male volunteers were asked to touch 13 parts of the robot’s body. Despite the fact that the study was too little to make clearing inferences from, it helps specialists building up the up and coming era of robots for exploration and human help.
Of course, the study was done under the best of intentions, in an attempt to figure out how limited human-robot interactions could be, at least for now. Also, how will companies respond to consumers trying to fuck non-sex robots, like robots designed for customer service in banks and hotels? Scientists have just shown that humans become physiologically aroused by touching a robot’s bottom.
The way nature meant it to be might seem to go like this: humans will consider these robots to be extensions of computers and hence friendly machines that have gone beyond their usual standard repertoires.
“We are not proposing to extent rights to robots”, a statement on the campaign group’s website reads.
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However, how the word “arousal” is used here is key, because the term doesn’t exactly mean that the individuals who participated in the study were sexually aroused while touching the robots. These will likely be built to look, move and sound like a human to ease awkwardness. Yes, humans do feel some level of arousal when touching parts of a robot that would correspond to a human’s “body parts with low accessibility”. They view channels of communication between both in future.
