Touch is a very important part of healthcare, but being touched elicits many different reactions. How will people react if they are being touched by a robot? A study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found people generally had a positive response toward being touched by a robotic nurse, but perception of the robot's intent makes a big difference. It seems counter-intuitive, but a robot actually telling the patient its intentions causes more distress than if touch is not explained. 

Cody, a robot in Charlie Kemp's Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech, was used in a study testing how subjects responded to being touched by a robot in a healthcare setting. In this initial test, researchers found that the subjects' perception of Cody's intent made a significant difference in how they responded. In this photo, Cody sports new Xbox 360 Kinect headgear, gear that he didn't have in the initial study. - Rob Felt/Georgia Tech

By initiating physical contact with people, robots can be more useful. For example, a robotic caregiver might make contact to provide physical assistance or facilitate communication. So as to better understand how people respond to robot-initiated touch, we conducted a 2x2 between-subjects experiment with 56 people in which a robotic nurse autonomously touched and wiped the subject's forearm. Our independent variables were whether or not the robot verbally warned the person before contact, and whether the robot verbally indicated that the touch was intended to clean the person's skin (instrumental touch) or to provide comfort (affective touch). On average, regardless of the treatment, participants had a generally positive subjective response. However, with instrumental touch people responded signicantly more favorably. Since the physical behavior of the robot was the same for all trials, our results demonstrate that the perceived intent of the robot can signicantly influence a person's subjective response to robot-initiated touch. Our results suggest that roboticists should consider this factor in addition to the mechanics of physical interaction. Unexpectedly, we found that participants tended to respond more favorably without a verbal warning. Although inconclusive, our results suggest that verbal warnings prior to contact should be carefully designed, if used at all. (via http://www.hsi.gatech.edu)

How might people react if they were touched by a robot? Would they recoil, or would they take it in stride? In an initial study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found people generally had a positive response toward being touched by a robotic nurse, but that their perception of the robot's intent made a significant difference. Charlie Kemp, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and Tiffany Chen, doctoral student at Tech, talk about their investigation that looks at how being attended by a robot can affect people's comfort level. The research took place in Kemp's Healthcare Robotics Lab with the robot known as Cody. Cody is now sporting new Xbox 360 Kinect headgear, gear that he didn't have in the initial study. Video: Rob Felt, David Terraso/Georgia Tech