Touching an Android Robot: Would You do It and How?

As the presence of robots in everyday life becomes more common, it is expected that interactions between humans and robots will include the modality of touch. To date, however, little research has been conducted on tactile interactions between humans and anthropomorphic robots. This study investigates human induced tactile interaction with an android robot. To facilitate data analysis, existing touch dictionaries were revised and adapted for the specifics of human-android interaction. By measuring the participants' personality traits and their perception of the robot, it was found that some tactile gestures are related to participants' personality traits, such as neuroticism and extroversion, and others to robot attributes such as anthropomorphism and animacy. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study to report on how people touch an android robot, and the correlation that exists between the tactile gestures used and the participants' personality traits. Possible implications are discussed.