# Can a robot cry?

**No robot on DEPLOY's record is verified to cry as an emotional response.** At least one robot has been built with tear sacs that shed real tears, and a peer-reviewed study found that tears make people read a robot as much sadder. Both are designed outputs, attributed to their researchers. The authors of that study state plainly that robots have no emotions and do not shed tears spontaneously.

Last verified Jun 1, 2023. 2 sources.

## Short answer

A robot can produce tears. Whether that is crying depends on what you mean by the word, and the honest answer separates the two halves.

The mechanical half is real and documented. A robot built at a Japanese university in September 2021 has tear sacs in its eyes and sheds tears, and researchers in Frontiers in Robotics and AI found that adding tears to a robot's face significantly raised how sad people judged it to be, and made them more willing to offer support. Those are findings about the machine's output and about human perception, each attributed to the team that produced it.

The felt half is not established, and the researchers are the ones saying so. The same paper states that as inorganic objects, robots have no emotions or will and do not shed tears spontaneously. The commercial robots people associate with emotion follow the same pattern: SoftBank announced Pepper as a robot that reads emotions, never as one that has them, and the MIT lab that named affective computing describes its work as responding to emotion rather than experiencing it.

So the tears are engineering, and the sadness is in the person watching. DEPLOY scopes the answer to its record and attributes every claim to its source.

## What is built vs what it means

- **The researchers who built and tested it: The tears are real.** A robot with tear sacs that sheds tears exists, and a peer-reviewed study found that adding tears to a robot's face raises how sad people judge it and how much they want to help. Both are attributed to the teams that produced them, as findings about output and perception.
- **The same researchers, on what it means: The feeling is not established.** The authors of that study write that as inorganic objects, robots have no emotions or will and do not shed tears spontaneously. The companies follow the same line: SoftBank announced Pepper as reading emotions, and the MIT group that named affective computing describes responding to emotion, not having it.
- **Where it stands: No robot verified to cry as an emotional response.** At this time, no robot on DEPLOY's record is verified to cry because it feels something. The tears are engineering and the sadness is in the person watching.

## The state of the evidence

| What the evidence shows | Kind | Date | Who | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Adding tears to a robot's face makes people read it as much sadder. Akiko Yasuhara and Takuma Takehara tested robot faces with and without tears in Frontiers in Robotics and AI. The tears condition scored significantly higher for intensity of sadness and drew stronger intentions to offer support. The authors are explicit about what this does not show, writing that as inorganic objects, robots have no emotions or will and do not shed tears spontaneously. The study used pictures of robots rather than physical robots, a limitation the authors state. | Peer-reviewed study | Jun 1, 2023 | Akiko Yasuhara and Takuma Takehara, Frontiers in Robotics and AI | [Frontiers in Robotics and AI](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10267379/) (2023-06-01) |
| One robot has been built with tear sacs that actually shed tears. The Frontiers study records a robot developed at a university in Japan in September 2021 that has tear sacs in its eyes, moistens them, and sheds tears. Its developer, Associate Professor Sejima, is described as wanting to create an atmosphere in which people find it easier to cry. The tears are a designed output for counselling and stress relief, attributed to the developer, not a response to any state the robot is in. | Reported demonstration | Sep 1, 2021 (as reported) | Associate Professor Sejima, Japan (recorded by Yasuhara and Takehara) | [Frontiers in Robotics and AI](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10267379/) (2023-06-01) |
| The best-known emotional robot was sold as reading emotions, never as having them. SoftBank Mobile and Aldebaran Robotics announced Pepper as the world's first personal robot that can read emotions, using emotion recognition that analyzes expressions and voice tones. The company's own wording is precise and worth keeping: Pepper estimates what a person is feeling. Nothing in the announcement claims the robot feels anything itself. | Commercial product claim | Jun 5, 2014 | SoftBank Mobile and Aldebaran Robotics | [SoftBank (official press release)](https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/group/sbm/news/press/2014/20140605_01/) (2014-06-05) |

## How we know this

- [Frontiers in Robotics and AI](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10267379/) (2023-06-01)
- [SoftBank (official press release)](https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/group/sbm/news/press/2014/20140605_01/) (2014-06-05)

## Common questions

### Can a robot cry tears?

Yes, at least one can. A robot developed at a university in Japan in September 2021 has tear sacs in its eyes and sheds tears, recorded in a Frontiers in Robotics and AI paper. The tears are a designed output intended for counselling and stress relief, attributed to its developer, not a response to any state the robot is in.

### Can a robot feel sadness?

No robot on DEPLOY's record is verified to feel sadness. The researchers who study robot tears say so directly: as inorganic objects, robots have no emotions or will and do not shed tears spontaneously. Robots can display sadness convincingly, and that display is real, but the inner experience behind it is not established.

### Do robot tears actually make people feel something?

Yes, and that is the measured finding. In a Frontiers in Robotics and AI study, robot faces shown with tears were rated significantly sadder than the same faces without them, and were more likely to prompt an intention to help. The effect ran through perceived warmth, helplessness, and connectedness. The study used pictures rather than physical robots, which the authors note as a limitation.

### What is affective computing?

Affective computing is the research field behind emotionally expressive machines. The MIT Media Lab group that defined it describes its mission as developing new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion, and its systems as responding intelligently to human emotional feedback. That framing is the group's own, and it is about recognising and responding to emotion, not about a machine having any.

### Which robots are built to show emotion?

Pepper, from SoftBank Robotics, was announced in 2014 as the world's first personal robot that can read emotions, using recognition of expressions and voice tones. Sophia, from Hanson Robotics, is a social humanoid that simulates expressions. On DEPLOY's record these are social and research platforms; each company's emotional framing is its own claim, not an independent finding.

### Can a robot feel pain?

That is a separate question with its own evidence, and DEPLOY keeps it on its own page. The short version is that no robot on the record is verified to feel pain either, though several labs have built damage-sensing skin that triggers a protective reflex. Pain is about nociception; crying is about emotional expression.

## Keep reading

- [Can a robot feel pain?](/can-a-robot-feel-pain.md): Capabilities & sentience
- [Which robots can do a backflip?](/which-robots-can-do-a-backflip.md): Capabilities & sentience
- [What can robots actually do today?](/what-can-robots-actually-do-today.md): Capabilities & sentience
- [Can humanoid robots cook?](/can-humanoid-robots-cook.md): Capabilities & sentience
- [All verified answers](/answers.md): Every standing question DEPLOY tracks.

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