SOTO: An android platform with a masculine appearance for social touch interaction

Abstract

In this paper, we report an android platform with a masculine appearance. In the human-human interaction research field, several studies reported the effects of gender in the social touch context. However, in the human-robot interaction research field, gender effects are mainly focused on human genders, i.e., a robot's perceived gender is less focused. The purpose of developing the android is to investigate gender effects in social touch in the context of the human-robot interaction, comparing to existing android platforms with feminine appearances. For this purpose, we prepared a nonexistent face design in order to avoid appearance effects and fabric-based capacitance type upper-body touch sensors.