Effects of Robot's Awareness and its Subtle Reactions Toward People's Perceived Feelings in Touch Interaction

This study addresses the effects of a robot's awareness and its subtle reactions toward the perceived feelings of people who touch a robot. When another unexpectedly touches us, we subtly and involuntarily react. Because such reactions are involuntary, it is impossible to eliminate them for humans. However, intentionally using them for robots might positively affect their perceived feelings, in particular, when a robot has a human-like appearance that evokes human-like reactions. We investigate the relationship between subtle reactions and the awareness of the existence of a human, i.e., whether a robot's awareness and its subtle reactions influence people's impressions of the robot when they touch it. Our experimental results with 20 participants and an android with a female-like appearance showed significant effects between awareness and subtle reactions. When the robot did not show awareness, its subtle reaction increased the perceived human-likeness. Moreover, when the robot did not show subtle reactions, showing awareness beforehand increased the perceived human-likeness.