Are scientists a little punch drunk?

When I saw this piece on the New Scientist website I was obviously intrigued. A headline about a robot punching people? Under the guise of it being in line with Isaac Asimov‘s rules? Asimov has written huge numbers of books exploring the interaction of robots and humans, including I, Robot, but didn’t he say a robot could never hurt a human? What was going on here… I clicked on (I was, in fact, so intrigued that I was spurred into subscribing – something I’ve been meaning to do but never quite got round to. Anyway, I digress).

As I read on, I was captivated; this is a perfect science story – someone doing something that seems a bit whacky, but there’s an underlying purpose to it all. I can tell by now you’re as intrigued as me… why are some Slovenian scientists getting robots to punch their friends? The suspense is almost unbearable, I’m sure.