If humanoid robots are to become commonplace in our society, it is important to understand how they are perceived by humans. An influent model in social cognitive neuroscience posits that in human face-to-face interaction, the observation of another individual performing an action facilitates the execution of a similar action, and interferes with the execution of different action. In one interference experiment, null interference was reported when subjects observed an industrial robotic arm moving at a constant velocity perform an incongruent task, suggesting that this effect may be specific to interacting with other humans. This experimental paradigm was adapted to investigate how humanoid robots interfere with humans. Subjects performed rhythmic arm movements while observing either a human agent or humanoid robot performing either congruent or incongruent movements with comparable kinematics. The …     «

If humanoid robots are to become commonplace in our society, it is important to understand how they are perceived by humans. An influent model in social cognitive neuroscience posits that in human face-to-face interaction, the observation of another individual performing an action facilitates the execution of a similar action, and interferes with the execution of different action. In one interference experiment, null interference was reported when subjects observed an industrial robotic arm movi...     »