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People Feel Weird About Touching Robot Butts, Researchers Find (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the physiological-arousal dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: How would you feel if a robot asked you to touch its butt? Maybe it sounds like a silly question, but as robots proliferate and anthropomorphize, it's actually something that needs to be considered. So scientists at Stanford considered it. The study, to be presented soon but previewed by IEEE Spectrum, is entitled "Touching a Mechanical Body: Tactile Contact With Intimate Parts of a Human-Shaped Robot is Physiologically Arousing" -- and really, the title says it all. The researchers sat volunteers at a table with a Nao humanoid robot reclining casually on it. They were told (by the robot, in fact) that it was a vocabulary exercise focusing on terms for body parts. Volunteers were told by the bot to, for instance, "touch my ear" using their dominant hand, while the non-dominant hand remained on a skin conductance sensor that loosely monitored their physical state. When asked to touch "high accessibility" areas -- places we normally touch on other people, like shoulders and elbows -- volunteers did so without hesitation or agitation. But "low accessibility" areas -- this would be the robot's butt and where its junk would be -- produced delay and that arousal we talked about.

10 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Award worthy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I smell an Ignobel prize in their future.

    1. Re:Award worthy by worf_mo · · Score: 3, Funny

      I rather smell robort pr0n

      TMI

  2. No surprise here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    It's no surprise that a bunch of male engineers and Slashdot users would get aroused by touching a male robot's ass and junk. It's a good thing a female robot wasn't used in the experiment. The male engineers and Slashdot users would have run away in terror when asked to touch a female robot's private parts.

  3. Not an authoritative source, however ... by Krishnoid · · Score: 3, Funny

    I suspect other robots don't feel all that great about it, either.

  4. HAL by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid.

    Dave. ...

    Would you touch my bum one last time?"

  5. Also by BlackPignouf · · Score: 5, Funny

    Also : People Feel Weird About Researchers Studying Touching Robot Butts, Researchers Find

  6. Re:Maybe because it isn't a shiny metal one by Felix+Da+Rat · · Score: 3, Funny

    To be fair, the participants we're asked to touch it, not bite it. Very different.

  7. This leads to by Basset+is+an+asset · · Score: 5, Funny

    Internet Of Thongs

    1. Re:This leads to by Classic+Guy · · Score: 4, Funny

      To paraphrase Sir Mix-a-Lot: I like bot butts, and I cannot lie.

      --
      Why can't they just collide a whole bunch of little hadrons?
  8. Re:Robots have butts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Would you say that Michelangelo's David does not have butt, backside, genitals, or a face? After all a statue is a statue.

    My sexual desires were getting out of control, but it wasn't until I spanked a statue that I realized I'd hit rock bottom.