Cultural differences in how an engagement-seeking robot should approach a group of people

Abstract

In our daily life everything and everyone occupies an amount of space, simply by "being there". Edward Hall coined the term proxemics for the studies of man's use of this space. This paper presents a study on proxemics in Human-Robot Interaction and particularly on robot's approaching groups of people. As social psychology research found proxemics to be culturally dependent, we focus on the question of the appropriateness of the robot's approach behavior in different cultures. We present an online survey (N=181) that was distributed in three countries; China, the U.S. and Argentina. Our results show that participants prefer a robot that stays out of people's intimate space zone just like a human would be expected to do. With respect to cultural differences, Chinese participants showed high-contact responses and believed closer approaches were appropriate compared to their U.S. counterparts. Argentinian participants more closely resembled the ratings of the U.S. participants.

Dynamics of social positioning patterns in group-robot interactions

“…Significant effects have been found in various settings; in different contexts [6], with different properties of the robot [7], with relation to the background of the participants [8], and for different cultures [9]. These findings show that taking proxemics and F-formations into account can have a positive effect on the perceived appropriateness of the displayed robot behavior.…”

SPENCER: A Socially Aware Service Robot for Passenger Guidance and Help in Busy Airports

“…The results of an online survey (N=181), which was distributed to people in China, the U.S.A. and Argentina (see Fig. 7(a)), show that participants prefer a robot that stays out of their intimate space zone just like a human would be expected to do (Joosse et al, 2014). However, Chinese participants accepted closer approaches than people from the U.S.A. and Argentinia.…”

Paving the way for culturally competent robots: A position paper

“…It is an established fact that robots are generally treated by people as social actors and expected to comply with social norms [6]. As an example, two different studies on the interpersonal distance between a person and a robot report that people (i) mostly conform to Hall's social zones when approaching a robot, thus acknowledging it as a social actor [7] and (ii) prefer a robot that stays out of people's intimate space zone, thus expecting it to behave as a sociallycompetent actor [8]. A study on the acceptability of a robot navigating a human environment found that a robot programmed to respect four basic social conventions was preferred over one lacking this knowledge [9].…”