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. A seemingly natural human response to these robots would be to look at them as a friendly, non-threatening computer. Could these robots actually provoke more of an emotional response from humans? A recent study by researchers at Stanford University found that touching a ro