What doesn't kill you makes you stronger: Conceptualising social robot's pain and Consumer's Empathic response through touch

Abstract

To be welcomed as assistant robots in our daily lives, robots must be liberated from their rigid, programmed logic and made more emotive and empathic to engage with people on their terms [1]. One of the key factors in designing and developing more human-like robots is to understand human emotions and behaviours regarding their pain empathy. This research focuses on the role of emotional touch (painful touch) in humanoid robots in the field of empathy. This paper explores empathic responses through emotional touch in pain conditions. The study conceptualizes a new product (Pain-empathy Bandage) that will be tested in a series of experiments to evoke emotional touch in humanoid robots. This new product will allow researchers to explore helping behaviour in Human-Robot Interaction through touch in “pain conditions”. Additionally, the study will show a comparison between different body parts of the robot that creates an “authentic touch sensation”. The study proposes a new method to evoke empathy in HRI through various pain cues (e.g., bandages).