Trying to see the world through someone else’s eyes is a great way to build empathy and understanding between people. Turns out, this approach — when taken literally — also works with robots. Researchers from the University of Bourgogne, University of Trento, and their colleagues used a head-mounted display to put people “inside” a robot and then studied their “likeability and closeness towards the robot.”
“We have demonstrated that by ‘beaming’ a participant into a robot we can change his or her attitude towards the robot,” says University of Trento psychologist Francesco Pavani.
“By ‘beaming’, we mean that we gave the participants the illusion that they were looking through the robot’s eyes, moving its head as if it were their head, look in the mirror and see themselves as a robot.”
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