I'M MORE UNCOMFORTABLE WHEN THEY TOUCH MINE:

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." The study shows that when a NAO robot asks humans to touch its butt, we get uncomfortable. This is weird because NAO doesn't really have a butt in the traditional sense of the word, and even if it did, it's just a robot, and on a very basic level it doesn't care where you touch it.

Tweet   @brothersjudd