Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Varsani, Puja (2018) The power of affective touch within social robotics. Masters thesis, Middlesex University. [Thesis] Final accepted version (with author’s formatting) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/25858/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. 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See also repository copyright: re-use policy: http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/policies.html#copy FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MSc by Research THE POWER OF AFFECTIVE TOUCH WITHIN SOCIAL ROBOTICS By: Puja Varsani Student Number: M00236892 Supervisor: Juan Augusto Michael Margolis This report is submitted to Middlesex University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc by Research. ABSTRACT There have been many leaps and bounds within social robotics, especially within human-robot interaction and how to make it a more meaningful relationship. This is traditionally accomplished through communicating via vision and sound. It has been shown that humans naturally seek interaction through touch yet the implications on emotions is unknown both in human-human interaction and social human-robot interaction. This thesis unpacks the social robotics community and the research undertaken to show a significant gap in the use of touch as a form of communication. The meaning behind touch will be investigated and what implication it has on emotions. A simplistic prototype was developed focusing on texture and breathing. This was used to carry out experiments to find out which combination of texture and movement felt natural. This proved to be a combination of synthetic fur and 14 breaths per minute. For human’s touch is said to be the most natural way of communicating emotions, this is the first step in achieving successful human-robot interaction in a more natural human-like way. 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to both my Director of Studies: Juan Augusto and Supervisor: Michael Margolis, without whom this thesis would not have been possible. I thank them for their guidance, expertise, motivation and most importantly, for their patience. Thanks, are also due to Professor Mehmet Karamanoglu and Dr. Aleksander Zivanovic who have always been there as a source of support and advice. I am grateful to my family for their support, encouragement and understanding. 2 CONTENTS 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 4 2. Social Robotics ..................................................................................................................... 6 2.1. Assistive Robotics ....................................................................................................... 13 2.2. Socially Interactive Robotics ...................................................................................... 14 2.3. Socially Assistive Robotics ......................................................................................... 15 2.4. Zoomorphic Robots .................................................................................................... 16 2.5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 17 3. Affective Touch .................................................................................................................. 19 3.1. The Haptic Creature .................................................................................................... 21 3.2. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 23 4. Design, Implementation and Experiments .......................................................................... 25 4.1. Experiments ................................................................................................................ 27 4.2. Methodology ............................................................................................................... 28 4.3. Results ......................................................................................................................... 29 4.4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 30 5. Further Work ....................................................................................................................... 32 5.1. Design ......................................................................................................................... 32 5.2. Mechanisms ................................................................................................................ 32 5.3. Interaction ................................................................................................................... 35 6. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 38 7. References ........................................................................................................................... 40 8. Appendix ............................................................................................................................. 48 3 MSc Research Puja Varsani 1. INTRODUCTION Traditionally, autonomous robots have been targeted for applications such as; inspecting oil wells, sweeping minefields or exploring other planets. Such robots require very little interaction with humans (Breazeal, 2001) but the growing market for personal service robots requires robots to play a beneficial role in the daily lives of people. Within the robotics community, there is a growing interest in building robots that share the same workspace as humans or a personal service robot (Breazeal, 2002). Some projects focus on autonomous robots others on tele- operational. New questions arise from this domain, such as how to design for a successful relationship where a long-term appeal could be provided by the robot which can be a benefit to the human for a longer period of time (Breazeal, 2005). A lot of thought and time has gone into the functionality of the system and making it reliable. It is now moving towards making a sociable robot able to perceive and understand the complexity of natural human social behaviour and to interact with people in a human-like manner (Breazeal, 2002). There has been a rise in robots being used as a research platform to study human emotions and others to assist the elderly in the home. However, it must also be able to send signals to the human in order to provide feedback of its own internal state which would allow the human to interact in a simplistic and transparent manner (Fong et al, 2003). Whatever the application, it is known that a physical embodiment of a bodily presence plays an important role assisting a meaningful social interaction (Lee et al, 2006). In human social life touch plays an important role, it communicates positive or negative emotions (Simon, 2011). Although, within social human-robot interaction, research has focused almost exclusively on the modalities of vision and sound; touch has received disproportionate attention (Yohanan & MacLean, 2008). Touch is increasingly seen to play an important role in mental health (Field, 2003). Robots have been predicted to transform everyday life, including the way healthcare is delivered (Nestorov et al, 2014). Much research in robot therapy has shown the positive health benefits of animal therapy (Stiehl et al, 2005) observing that when patients engage physically with an animal type robot, it stimulates affection (Shibata et al, 2001). Research in socially assistive robotics demonstrated success in hands-on rehabilitation; this presents a new set of research challenges as roboticist try to understand how human-robot interaction can effectively and measurably assist in the process of recovery, rehabilitation, socialisation and companionship (Mataric & Tapus, 2006). There are many theories and beliefs about the ‘power of touch’ being an affective