A team after the Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia (IIT) in
Genoa has shown how the gaze of a robot can trick us into thinking that we are
interacting socially and slow down our ability to make decisions.
Making eye contact with a robot can be a disturbing
experience, as has long been known. Scientists even have a name for the effect:
the "haunting valley."
Now, thanks to
researchers in Italy, we also know that it is more than a sensation.
A team beginning the Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia (IIT)
in Genoa has shown how the gaze of a robot can trick us into thinking that we
are interacting socially and slow down our ability to make decisions.
"The gaze is an extremely important social cue that we
employ on a day-to-day basis when interacting with others," said Professor
Agnieszka Wykowska, lead author of the research, published Wednesday in the
journal Science Robots.
"The question is whether the robot's gaze will evoke
very similar mechanisms in the human brain as the gaze of another human
would."
The team asked 40 volunteers to play a video game where each
player has to decide whether to allow a car to head straight for another car or
swerve to avoid a collision, against a humanoid robot sitting in front of them.
Players had to look
at the android, which sometimes looked back and sometimes the other way.
In each scenario, the experts collected data on neuronal
behavior and activity through 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 that signal has an impact on
the way we make decisions, on the strategies we implement in the game and also going
on our answers" Wykowska said.
"The mutual gaze of the machine affected decisions by
delaying them, so humans were much slower to make decisions in the game."
The findings have inferences for where and how humanoid
robots will be deployed in the future.
"Once we understand when robots cause social
attunement, then we can decide what kind of context is desirable and beneficial
for humans and in what context this shouldn't happen," Wykowska said.
According to a prosperous by the International Federation of
Robotics, global sales of specialized service robots had already increased 32%
to $ 11.2 billion between 2018 and 2019.
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