Touch from Robots Loses to Chatting via Text: A Comparative Study of Sympathy Demonstrated Using Text, Robot Arm, and Qoobo

Social touch is helpful for improving social connection, and it is one potential method to improve online communication with people at a distance. Although prior work examined if social touch from robot is effective for communicating sympathy compared to text and GIFs, the results indicated that touch from a robotic arm was not effective as a means of conveying sympathy. Therefore, in order to examine how to make social touch from robots more effective, we conducted an experiment using Qoobo a more lifelike robot. Results (50 dyads) indicate that the touching method we used was not effective for conveying sympathy. Interviews with participants suggested the ways to improve robot; that is, making the robot look like an animal, such as Qoobo, with adding warmth would be effective.