What is the speed boundary between patting and slapping by a robot?: Investigating perceptions toward robot-robot interaction

Such multiple agent interactions as robot-robot interactions are one effective approach to indirectly provide information, unlike direct interactions between people and agents. Several studies reported the effectiveness of this approach and developed conversational mechanisms for robot-robot interaction, although their physical interaction design for robot-robot interaction remains relatively less focused. This study concentrated on the effects of speed in touching behaviors between robots, because people may perceive the relationships shared between robots differently due to various motion speeds even though the motion is identical. Therefore, we conducted two web-survey experiments to investigate the perceptions of a robot's touching motion and how the relationship between two robots was perceived when a robot touched another at different speeds. The first experiment showed two peak speeds where people perceived a robot's touch as patting (friendly touch) or slapping (aggressive touch). The second experiment results showed similar peak speeds where people perceived the relationships between robots as positive or negative to patting or slapping behaviors. We believe that knowledge about the relationships between motion speeds and perceived friendliness between robots will contribute to design physical interaction between robots.