Touching a robot can elicit physiological arousal in humans

On the scale of the "uncanny valley," the humanoid robot registers a positive response with humans just before the dip into repulsion. Its resemblance hovers between C-3PO and Wall-E, a familiar but distinctly non-human robot. ...

Fish fins can sense touch

The human fingertip is a finely tuned sensory machine, and even slight touches convey a great deal of information about our physical environment. It turns out, some fish use their pectoral fins in pretty much the same way. ...

Imagine if technology could read and react to our emotions

Computers have always been good at doing fast calculations, but adapting to the emotional state of the person using the computer – now there is a grand challenge! The field is called affective computing, and soon it will ...

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