Touching a Robot's 'Intimate Parts' Makes People Uncomfortable

Humanoid robots can sense the world around them, move their bodies, and interact with people in ways that are similar to the ways that real people interact. But a robot's "human-ness" is (at least for now) all just a simulation. It's a combination of clever software, and in some cases, hardware that's designed to make it easy for us to fool ourselves into thinking that some glorified box of circuits is even a little bit like a person. We're very, very good at fooling ourselves like this, to the point where it starts to get a little weird. Researchers from Stanford University will present a paper at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association in Fukuoka, Japan, in June, with the title of "Touching a Mechanical Body: Tactile Contact With Intimate Parts of a Human-Shaped Robot is Physiologically Arousing."