Two research directions have been trying to breach the barrier between humans and robots: physically (pHRI), and socially (sHRI), which have been evolving without many intersections. But for robots to really coexist and collaborate with humans, it is necessary to take into account both physical and social interactions. We define active physical human-robot interaction (active pHRI) as a type of interaction during the robot should be able to achieve tasks optimally, efficiently, safely, and at the same time take into account the perception of human users. In this talk, I will illustrate the experiments performed to target a fundamental step towards achieving active pHRI: understanding the relationships between the human’s perceptions and their measurable data when a robot takes direct active physical actions on the human, with insights on outcomes, applications, and developments.