Effects of interaction and appearance on subjective impression of robots

Human-interactive robots are assessed according to various factors, such as behavior, appearance, and quality of interaction. In the present study, we investigated the hypothesis that impressions of an unattractive robot will be improved by emotional interaction with physical touch with the robot. An experiment with human subjects confirmed that the evaluations of the intimacy factor of unattractive robots were improved after two minutes of physical and emotional interaction with such robots.