'Emotional' robots can tell your gender from a handshake

Researchers in Paris are developing touch-sensitive robots that can infer someone’s gender and personality by shaking hands with them.

Adriana Tapus and colleagues at Université Paris-Saclay are developing humanoid robots that are sensitive to tactile stimulation, and hope their technology can benefit the elderly and those with autism.

“Giving robots a personality is the only way our relationship with artificial intelligence will survive,” said Tapus. “If we can simulate a human-like emotional response from a robot we can ensure a two-way relationship, benefiting the most vulnerable and isolated members of our society. Our research will help the next generation of social robots to be polite, empathetic, and maybe have their own sense of humour.”

The team has also developed robots that can display different emotions depending on the situation and context – adapting their arm stiffness depending on who they’re shaking hands with, for example.

Another strand of research hopes to help people with autism become more social, by investigating how they interpret emotions displayed by robots as compared to humans.

“It’s a tool to aid the human worker,” said Gilbert Tang, a robotics researcher at Cranfield University, who was not involved in the research. “It’s something that’s available all the time,” he told Professional Engineering.

Tang said that this kind of technology could transfer into the industrial space to make collaborative robots on the factory floor more human. “There’s more room for error,” he said. “If you look at industrial robots, they’re designed to make things quickly and as fast as possible, whereas in a domestic environment robots tend to be closer to people. In the factory, although a cobot is within reach, it’s not as huggable.”