Humans 'physiologically aroused' by touching robot's butt

Pepper, a humanoid robot by Aldebaran Robotics and SoftBank Mobile, interacts with Aurore Chiquot in Las Vegas ahead of the CES 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. Pepper is a social robot created to converse, recognize and react to emotions. less Pepper, a humanoid robot by Aldebaran Robotics and SoftBank Mobile, interacts with Aurore Chiquot in Las Vegas ahead of the CES 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. Pepper is a social robot created to converse, ... more Photo: Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images Photo: Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close Humans 'physiologically aroused' by touching robot's butt 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

In a new study, Stanford researchers programmed a humanoid robot to ask college students to "please touch my buttocks" to see how they would react.

As you might expect, the students felt uncomfortable and reluctant. What, on the first date? Not even dinner first?

But the undergrads — each alone in a room with a NAO robot — did what was requested, using their non-dominant hand to feel the robot's bum. A skin conductance sensor showed that physiological arousal — that is, attention, alertness and awareness, not necessarily sexual arousal — rose when subjects touched intimate areas such as buttocks, breasts, inner thighs and genitals.

"Touching less accessible regions of the robot (e.g., buttocks and genitals) was more physiologically arousing than touching more accessible regions (e.g., hands and feet). No differences in physiological arousal were found when just pointing to those same anatomical regions," IEEE Spectrum's Automaton blog quoted the study.

"Further evidence of participants' sensitivity to touching low-accessible regions of a robot emerged in an analysis of response time, which was longer for participants who touched low accessible but not high-accessible areas."

But why does touching a robot's plastic rear-end elicit heighten human sensitivity? It's not like it's an erogenous zone. The robot gets nothing out of this contact. You might as well be fondling a toaster.

The Stanford scientists theorize that robots' human-like form may elicit a primitive response that trumps the rational assessment of "I'm touching a machine."

"People are not inherently built to differentiate between technology and humans," they wrote. "Consequently, primitive responses in human physiology to cues like movement, language and social intent can be elicited by robots just as they would by real people."

Stanford University will present a paper in June on the experiment at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association in Fukuoka, Japan. The title is "Touching a Mechanical Body: Tactile Contact With Intimate Parts of a Human-Shaped Robot is Physiologically Arousing."

Jamy Li, who led the research team, says the study's findings may suggest that developers should consider robot anatomy when designing interfaces.

"For example, people might feel more comfortable interacting with humanoid robots in the majority of social contexts where the touch buttons are primarily on its hands, arms and forehead as opposed to buttons that are on areas like its eyes, buttocks or throughout its body," Li said.

Got that, builders of future robot butlers? We don't want to have to poke Jeeves in the butt just to get him to make us a cup of coffee.