The path to sex robots may be farther off than once thought, and it turns out it isn't the technology that's to blame - it's humans. A new study found that despite being simply plastic, metal and wires, robots can elicit actual physical responses in people.
A team of scientists from Stanford University through a study found that beyond simple appearance and shape, touch is an important part of the human-robotic experience.
In the study titled "Touching a Mechanical Body: Tactile Content with Intimate Parts of a Human-Shaped Robot is Physiologically Arousing," Jamy Li, Wendy Ju and Byron Reeves used Aldeberan Robotic's NAO human-shaped robot. The robot was programmed to give verbal instructions to participants fitted with an Affectiva Q-Sensor on the fingers of their non-dominant hand, asking them to touch 13 parts of its body.
The Affectiva Q-Sensor measured skin conductance - when skin briefly becomes a better conductor of electricity - which the team used as a proxy for physiological arousal, and the results were quite stimulating - for both the participants and researchers. The study found that when asked to touch more accessible areas like the hands and neck, people were comfortable doing so. However, when asked to touch areas that would usually be home to genitals or the butt, which researchers refer to as "body parts with low accessibility," not only did participants have low level reactions, but they were more hesitant to touch the robot to begin with. It was also noted that no such reaction was recorded when people were instructed to point to that location.
For researchers, this meant only one thing: "The finding that tactile sensation with a robot affects human physiology lends merit to the idea that robots can elicit powerful social responses from people." Contrary to the belief that people are simply playing along, these feelings actually occur on a deeper physiological level.
An example of this can be seen with a Roomba versus a toaster. As Li notes, it's common for people who own a Roomba to give it a name or talk to it home - something that isn't done with a toaster. It means that there is possibly a connection between touching the robot and intimacy, and it goes beyond being a device.
"Our work shows that robots are a new form of media that is particularly powerful. It shows that people respond to robots in a primitive, social way," said Li. "Social conventions regarding touching someone else's private parts apply to a robot's body parts as well."
Of course, this begs the question of what this means for the aforementioned sex robots. 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." However, the study also found that people felt weird while doing it. The point of these robots were to be something that you can simply buy and be pervy with, so it seems pointless to sink a multi-thousand dollar investment into one just to realize that you feel weird using it.
On a more serious note though, the findings do have more readily apparent applications for robot design and artificial systems. For example, a conversational robot could be programmed to invite people to touch it on its shoulder and then measure their physiological reaction to tell how they're feeling about it and react accordingly.
Li, Ju and Reeves are set to present their findings at the 66th Annual International Communication Association Conference in Fukuoka, Japan, in June.
Check out a video about touching a robot's butt below:
