Exploring the role of robotic kissing “Kissenger” in digital communication through alan turing's imitation game

With advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, and increasing prevalence of commercial social robots and chatbots, humans are communicating with artificially intelligent machines for various applications in a wide range of settings. Intimate touch is crucial to relationships forming and emotional bonding, however it remains as a missing element in digital communication between humans, as well as humans and machines. A kissing machine, Kissenger, is built to transmit haptic kissing sensations in a communication network. In order to investigate the role of robotic kissing using the Kissenger device in digital communication, we conducted a modified version of the Imitation Game described by Alan Turing by including the use of the kissing machine. The study consists of 4 rounds, in which participants communicate with two players, a male and a female, using online chatrooms with the goal to identify the female player. In the last two rounds, the male player is replaced with a chatbot with female personas. Participants are told to remotely kiss the players using the kissing device at least once during the chat in the second and fourth round, but not in the first and third round. Results show that robotic kissing has no effect on the winning rates of the male and female players during human-human communication, but it increases the winning rate of the female player when a chatbot is involved in the game.