Appearance is not everything - Preferred feature combinations for care robots

Emotional experiences of service robots' anthropomorphic appearance: a multimodal measurement method

Anthropomorphic appearance is a key factor to affect users' attitudes and emotions. This research aimed to measure emotional experience caused by robots' anthropomorphic appearance with three levels - high, moderate, and low - using multimodal measurement. Fifty participants' physiological and eye-tracker data were recorded synchronously while they observed robot images that were displayed in random order. Afterward, the participants reported subjective emotional experiences and attitudes towards those robots. The results showed that the images of the moderately anthropomorphic service robots induced higher pleasure and arousal ratings, and yielded significantly larger pupil diameter and faster saccade velocity, than did the low or high robots. Moreover, participants' facial electromyography, skin conductance, and heart-rate responses were higher when observing moderately anthropomorphic service robots. An implication of the research is that service robots' appearance should be designed to be moderately anthropomorphic; too many human-like features or machine-like features may disturb users' positive emotions and attitudes.Practitioner Summary: This research aimed to measure emotional experience caused by three types of anthropomorphic service robots using a multimodal measurement experiment. The results showed that moderately anthropomorphic service robots evoked more positive emotion than high and low anthropomorphic robots. Too many human-like features or machine-like features may disturb users' positive emotions.

When Robots Fail—A VR Investigation on Caregivers’ Tolerance towards Communication and Processing Failures

Robots are increasingly used in healthcare to support caregivers in their daily work routines. To ensure an effortless and easy interaction between caregivers and robots, communication via natural language is expected from robots. However, robotic speech bears a large potential for technical failures, which includes processing and communication failures. It is therefore necessary to investigate how caregivers perceive and respond to robots with erroneous communication. We recruited thirty caregivers, who interacted in a virtual reality setting with a robot. It was investigated whether different kinds of failures are more likely to be forgiven with technical or human-like justifications. Furthermore, we determined how tolerant caregivers are with a robot constantly returning a process failure and whether this depends on the robot’s response pattern (constant vs. variable). Participants showed the same forgiveness towards the two justifications. However, females liked the human-like justification more and males liked the technical justification more. Providing justifications with any reasonable content seems sufficient to achieve positive effects. Robots with a constant response pattern were liked more, although both patterns achieved the same tolerance threshold from caregivers, which was around seven failed requests. Due to the experimental setup, the tolerance for communication failures was probably increased and should be adjusted in real-life situations.

Social robots as eating companions

Previous research shows that eating together (i.e., commensality) impacts food choice, time spent eating, and enjoyment. Conversely, eating alone is considered a possible cause of unhappiness. In this paper, we conceptually explore how interactive technology might allow for the creation of artificial commensal companions: embodied agents providing company to humans during meals (e.g., a person living in isolation due to health reasons). We operationalize this with the design of our commensal companion: a system based on the MyKeepon robot, paired with a Kinect sensor, able to track the human commensal's activity (i.e., food picking and intake) and able to perform predefined nonverbal behavior in response. In this preliminary study with 10 participants, we investigate whether this autonomous social robot-based system can positively establish an interaction that humans perceive and whether it can influence their food choices. In this study, the participants are asked to taste some chocolates with and without the presence of an artificial commensal companion. The participants are made to believe that the study targets the food experience, whilst the presence of a robot is accidental. Next, we analyze their food choices and feedback regarding the role and social presence of the artificial commensal during the task performance. We conclude the paper by discussing the lessons we learned about the first interactions we observed between a human and a social robot in a commensality setting and by proposing future steps and more complex applications for this novel kind of technology.

Humans Can't Resist Robot Eyes - Reflexive Cueing With Pseudo-Social Stimuli

Joint attention is a key mechanism for humans to coordinate their social behavior. Whether and how this mechanism can benefit the interaction with pseudo-social partners such as robots is not well understood. To investigate the potential use of robot eyes as pseudo-social cues that ease attentional shifts we conducted an online study using a modified spatial cueing paradigm. The cue was either a non-social (arrow), a pseudo-social (two versions of an abstract robot eye), or a social stimulus (photographed human eyes) that was presented either paired (e.g. two eyes) or single (e.g. one eye). The latter was varied to separate two assumed triggers of joint attention: the social nature of the stimulus, and the additional spatial information that is conveyed only by paired stimuli. Results support the assumption that pseudo-social stimuli, in our case abstract robot eyes, have the potential to facilitate human-robot interaction as they trigger reflexive cueing. To our surprise, actual social cues did not evoke reflexive shifts in attention. We suspect that the robot eyes elicited the desired effects because they were human-like enough while at the same time being much easier to perceive than human eyes, due to a design with strong contrasts and clean lines. Moreover, results indicate that for reflexive cueing it does not seem to make a difference if the stimulus is presented single or paired. This might be a first indicator that joint attention depends rather on the stimulus' social nature or familiarity than its spatial expressiveness. Overall, the study suggests that using paired abstract robot eyes might be a good design practice for fostering a positive perception of a robot and to facilitate joint attention as a precursor for coordinated behavior.