Can you touch me?

Abstract

As a robot has both characteristics of humanness and productness, we explored which characteristic is more dominant between them. In order to explore the impact of communicator types on social presence and shyness in physical contact, we executed a 3 (communicator types: a human vs. a robot vs. a product) with-in participants experiment (N=30). Participants felt more social presence to a person than a robot, and a product. On the other hand, participants felt more shyness to a person than a product, and a robot.