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September 1 (Reuters) – It has long been known that eye contact with a robot can be a disturbing experience. Even scientists have a name for the unpleasant sensation: the “strange valley.”
Now, thanks to researchers in Italy, we also know that it’s more than just a feeling.
A team at the Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa has shown how the gaze of a robot can deceive us into thinking that we are interacting socially and slowing down our ability to make decisions.
“The gaze is an extremely important social signal that we use in everyday life when we interact with others,” said Professor Agnieszka Wykowska, lead author of the research, published Wednesday in the journal Science Robots.
“The question is whether the robot gaze will evoke mechanisms very similar to the human brain as would the gaze of another human being.”
The team asked 40 volunteers to play a “chicken” video game, where each player must decide whether to allow one car to drive directly to another or deviate to avoid a collision with a sitting humanoid robot. in front of them.
The head of Ai-Da, a humanoid robot capable of attracting people from life with its bionic eyes and hands, is seen at the offices of the robotics company Engineered Arts, in Falmouth, Cornwall, UK, on 7 February 2019. REUTERS / Matthew Stock / Photo file
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Between rounds, players had to look at the robot, which sometimes looked back and others looked the other way.
In each scenario, the scientists collected data on neuronal behavior and activity using electroencephalography (EEG), which detects electrical activity in the brain.
“Our results show that, in reality, the human brain processes the robot’s gaze as a social signal and this signal has an impact on our way of making decisions, on the strategies we implement in the game and also on our responses.” . Wykowska said.
“The mutual gaze of the robot affected the decisions by delaying them, so humans were much slower when it came to making game decisions.”
The findings have implications for where and how humanoid robots will deploy in the future.
“Once we understand when robots cause social tuning, we can decide what kind of context is desirable and beneficial to humans and in what context it should not occur,” Wykowska said.
According to a report by the International Federation of Robotics, global sales of professional service robots had already jumped 32% to $ 11.2 billion between 2018 and 2019.
Stuart McDill Reports; Edited by Alex Richardson
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