Exploring behaviours perceived as important for human-Dog bonding and their translation to a robotic platform.

To facilitate long-term engagement with social robots, emerging evidence suggests that modelling robots on social animals with whom many people form enduring social bonds-specifically, pet dogs-may be useful. However, scientific understanding of the features of pet dogs that are important for establishing and maintaining social bonds remains limited to broad qualities that are liked, as opposed to specific behaviours. To better understand dog behaviours that are perceived as important for facilitating social bonds between owner and pet, we surveyed current dog owners (n = 153) with open-ended questions about their dogs' behaviours.

"Hit the Robot on the Head With This Mallet" - Making a Case for Including More Open Questions in HRI Research.

Researchers continue to devise creative ways to explore the extent to which people perceive robots as social agents, as opposed to objects. One such approach involves asking participants to inflict 'harm' on a robot. Researchers are interested in the length of time between the experimenter issuing the instruction and the participant complying, and propose that relatively long periods of hesitation might reflect empathy for the robot, and perhaps even attribution of human-like qualities, such as agency and sentience.

A neurocognitive investigation of the impact of socializing with a robot on empathy for pain.

To what extent can humans form social relationships with robots? In the present study, we combined functional neuroimaging with a robot socializing intervention to probe the flexibility of empathy, a core component of social relationships, towards robots. Twenty-six individuals underwent identical fMRI sessions before and after being issued a social robot to take home and interact with over the course of a week. While undergoing fMRI, participants observed videos of a human actor or a robot experiencing pain or pleasure in response to electrical stimulation.