Although they’re really just a mass of synthetic materials, metal and wires, robots have the power to make humans feel ‘aroused’ when they become intimate with one another, according to a new study by Stanford University scientists.

The researchers came to that conclusion after analyzing what happened to a group of volunteers when they were asked to touch robots in ‘areas’ where it would be inappropriate to touch a non-consenting human being.

The Stanford University team set up a series of experiments to test their ideas using a small “Nao robot”, according to The Guardian. The robot – which really can’t be described as “attractive” by anyone’s standards, was programmed to ask test subjects to either touch or point at one of 13 different parts of its body. When they did so, the scientists measured the skin conductance of the test subjects, in order to gauge their physiological arousal.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the strongest signs of arousal occurred when the subjects were asked to touch the robot’s ‘private parts’, the areas where one would find genitalia or buttocks on a real life human. Touching these “body parts with low accessibility”, as the researchers put it, elicited much stronger signs of arousal than when the subjects were instructed to touch non-intimate body parts, the researchers found. When asked to just point at the robot’s sensitive parts, there was no sign of arousal.

The researchers plan to present their findings in more detail at the International Communication Association in Japan this June.

“Our work shows that robots are a new form of media that is particularly powerful. It shows that people respond to robots in a primitive, social way,” said Stanford PhD student Jamy Li. “Social conventions regarding touching someone else’s private parts apply to a robot’s body parts as well. This research has implications for both robot design and theory of artificial systems.”

Not too mention, we imagine, implications for some of the more pragmatic thinkers in the adult entertainment industry.

Image credit: Bamenny via pixabay