Abstract
While a robot and a human are communicating with each other, much information about the human such as gender and personality is observable by the robot through tactile information. This paper proposes a method for estimating a human's gender, personality traits and emotional state by using tactile information measured over the entire body of a robot. We conducted communication experiments between a robot and a human and recorded tactile information as well as the human's gender, personality traits and emotional state. Our results show that each of these characteristics is correlated with observable patterns in the tactile data. By building on these findings, robots will be able to estimate information about humans based on tactile information.
