Abstract
Recent studies have shown how embodiment induced by multisensory bodily interactions between individuals can positively change social attitudes (closeness, empathy, racial biases). Here we use a simple neuroscience-inspired procedure to beam our human subjects into one of two distinct robots and demonstrate how this can readily increase acceptability and social closeness to that robot. Participants wore a Head Mounted Display tracking their head movements and displaying the 3D visual scene taken from the eyes of a robot which was positioned in front of a mirror and piloted by the subjects’ head movements. As a result, participants saw themselves as a robot. When participant’ and robot’s head movements were correlated, participants felt that they were incorporated into the robot with a sense of agency. Critically, the robot they embodied was judged more likeable and socially closer. Remarkably, we found that the beaming experience with correlated head movements and corresponding sensation of embodiment and social proximity, was independent of robots’ humanoid’s appearance. These findings not only reveal the ease of body-swapping, via visual-motor synchrony, into robots that do not share any clear human resemblance, but they may also pave a new way to make our future robotic helpers socially acceptable.
Highlights
A major challenge when building robots that operate in everyday contexts is the definition of those features that can make the robot socially accepted by humans
By using two different robots, we wanted to assess whether robot embodiment and ensuing social acceptance would depend on the robot having or not a closer resemblance to the structure and morphology of the human body
In order to determine the respective effects of robot morphology, humanoid vs non-humanoid (R-Type) and of the robot state, static vs. correlated vs uncorrelated (R-State), behavioral responses were compared between R-Type and R-State
Summary
A major challenge when building robots that operate in everyday contexts is the definition of those features that can make the robot socially accepted by humans. When a subject facing a partner is touched on the face in synchrony and at the same location as the partner’s face, an illusion of enfacement can occur suggesting that features of other’s identity can be incorporated in the representation of self[10] Such a change in self-face recognition contingent on visuo-tactile facial stimulation has been extended to social and conceptual representations. In order to determine the respective effects of robot morphology, humanoid vs non-humanoid (R-Type) and of the robot state, static vs correlated vs uncorrelated (R-State), behavioral responses were compared between R-Type and R-State These novel results reveal that our simple and rapid beaming procedure can produce systematic changes into the observer’s social attitude towards robots. By taking a different stance towards acceptability (i.e. not based on appearance), built on embodiment research, we have provided proof-of-concept that beaming into robots can overcome the major challenge of making robots socially acceptable
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