Vicarious Evaluation of a Decision Model for Human-Agent Social Touch Interactions

In this paper, we present a decision model aimed at determining when a social touch by a socially interactive agent (SIA) would be considered socially ‘correct’ : both coherent (meaningful given the current situation) and acceptable to the human interlocutor. Those decisions are computed by taking the context of interaction and the estimated level of rapport between the human and the agent into account. We then present a study based on a vicarious protocol where participants evaluated recorded interactions between an avatar (a human-controlled 3D character) and our agent. Results indicate that the estimations made by our decision model regarding the state of the situation mirror those made by human observers. Our initial hypothesis that the level of rapport would positively influence the acceptability of a touch receives mixed support. Social touch occurrences did not feel as coherent and acceptable as hoped yet. Avenues of improvement for human-agent interactions including social touch are discussed.