The main purpose of robots is to assist humans in doing various tasks. However, a recent study found that these humanoid machines can elicit physiological responses from a human and can even sexually arouse them.
The research, which came from Stanford University in California, included a two feet tall robot and possessed 13 human body parts, The Guardian reported. For the study, ten volunteers -- four female, six male -- were asked to touch the robot's buttocks and genital areas.
The Aldebaran Robotics Nao humanoid robot asked the volunteers to touch them. While the responder's dominant hand touched the robot's intimate parts, researchers monitored the person's non-dominant hand for reactions. Volunteers had to wear a sensor on their non-dominant hand that measured skin conductance, which indicates physiological arousal.
"Our work shows that robots are a new form of media that is particularly powerful," said Jamy Li, who led the study and is a mechanical engineer at Stanford University, as reported by the Guardian. "It shows that people respond to robots in a primitive, social way. Social conventions regarding touching someone else's private parts apply to a robot's body parts as well. The research has implications for both robot design and the theory of artificial systems."
The Guardian noted that the robot's covering was plastic and with "no textural or temperature differences anywhere."
According to the study, the human participants' emotions and attention are aroused when their sympathetic nervous system comes up and fills their sweat ducts, leading to the increase of conductance of the skin, The Washington Post wrote.
In the study, "arousal" didn't mean that the volunteers were entertaining sexual thoughts about the robot. For them, touching the robot's intimate parts made them more alert. However, the participants were more hesitant to touch the humanoid machines' private zones.
The Washington Post reported that "80 percent of participants took longer to touch more 'private' parts than ones commonly touched in human social interactions."
"There was a tendency to treat the robot like it had social rules that applied to it," said Li, as quoted by the news outlet. "Perhaps people feel like robots with human-like bodies are more like a person."
The entire issue of robots satisfying the sexual needs of human remains both possible and debatable. Li, however, hopes that his research would make people think about what happens when humans and robots connect.
"It's a powerful way to interact. It makes us want to proceed with cautious optimism," he said, as quoted by The Washington Post.
Li will present his research at the 66th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association in June.
