I recently (January 2025) published a chapter in Jaime Banks’ Android, Assembled: The Explicit and Implicit Anatomy of Social Robots published by Peter Lang.

The chapter explores how imbuing robots with tactile qualities meant to facilitate more meaningful social interactions often perpetuates normative notions of care, labor, and gender, reinforcing existing relationships of power.

If you do not have access to the edited collection and would like a copy of my chapter, please reach out. Here is a pre-print copy of the introduction paragraphs:

Tactility & Texture: Embrace at the Interface

In 2005, roboticists from MIT’s Media Lab presented research from their Robotic Life Group based at an international conference (Stiehl & Breazeal, 2005; Stiehl et al., 2005). . They argued that developers of robotics systems, which at that point had primarily been built for industrial settings, had largely focused on object manipulation. This meant little attention had been paid to how robotic systems might interact with human users. In particular, tactile sensors were only considered for grips that manipulated objects, and failing to consider how robots might physically feel to humans. The researchers argued that touch plays a vital role in supporting companionship and had potential health benefits as well—claims backed up by empirical research into human-human touch (Fields, 2001) and human-animal touch (Ballarini, 2003). The researchers developed Huggable, a robot that looked like a stuffed teddy bear, to address the lacuna of research on the affective, relational, and health impacts of human-robot interaction. Huggable was also meant to fill a technical gap left by other popular social robots at the time, including Paro and AIBO. As the authors pointed out, the seal-like Paro and dog-liked AIBO had limited touch sensors located only in certain parts of their bodies while Huggable included sensors over its entire body and the ability to actively “touch back through nuzzling, hugging, and other communicative touch behaviors” (Stiehl et al., 2005, p. 408).

The name Huggable evokes a desire to explore the affective (psychophysical, social, and cultural foundations related to feelings and emotions) and relational dimensions of social robots as touch oriented. After all, what could be more social than a hug? What Huggable represented was an early attempt to understand how touch matters in human-robot interactions that take seriously the issues of tactility and texture. Attempts to develop technical systems of touch for social robots and research to determine the social implications of these systems constitutes a growing area of academic and commercial inquiry, but it still lags behind technical and social research in areas related to visual, verbal, and auditory communication. Despite advances related to the technical features and social implications of touch for social robots, most studies focus on affective, relational, and health dimensions first articulated in the Robotic Life Group’s research. While questions about how touch matters in these areas matter and should be expanded, there are provocative issues to explore regarding the texture and tactility of social robots that go beyond personal and interpersonal effects—issues that intersect around care, labor, gender, and power, to name a few.