Behavioral analysis of touch-based interaction of humans with an egg-shaped robot

Abstract

In this paper, we examined the tendency of non-experts to exhibit emotional touch interactions with a robot model. For the experiment, we defined proper characteristics of the egg-shaped robot. We divided distance into three types: spatial distance, robot size and emotional distance. From the experimental results, we were able to define the properties of touch interaction according to a set of factors: location, interaction type, direction, normal direction and degree of repetition. We were able to find the preference for the type of touch interaction according to the location of the robot, and to classify the semantic type of touch interaction according to emotional group. We also gained some inspiration from interviews with participants.