Your Touch Leaves Me Cold, Robot.

Abstract

This study, investigates whether stress reducing effects as they are known from human-human interaction also occur while humans interact with robots. To analyze the individual stress level, 63 participants were asked about their stress level before and after they interacted with a humanoid robot. Three different conditions of touch behavior were analyzed in the course of this study: active touch, passive touch as well as no touch. However, as the results of this study indicate, there seems to be no difference between those three touch conditions and the individual perception of stress.