Evaluating the Effects of Personalized Appearance on Telepresence Robots for Education

Fitter, Naomi T.; Chowdhury, Yasmin; Cha, Elizabeth; Takayama, Leila; Matarić, Maja J.

doi:10.1145/3173386.3177030

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Numerous exploratory studies have examined the experiences of novice operators of telepresence robots in novel settings. In the United States, there was a study of the first-time experiences of elementary and middle school children (ages 9–13) with operating telepresence robots as part of navigating obstacle courses and interacting with experimenters during simulated learning activities [ 39 ]. This study revealed how novices may need help troubleshooting technology issues, and the importance of infrastructure, such as a reliable connection to facilitate uninterrupted engagement with telepresence robots.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Insufficient mobility and the need for human intervention has been associated with poor perceived ease of use [ 21 , 65 ]. Fitter et al revealed that the ease of use of telepresence robots for elementary age students was impacted by the initial setup of the software needed to operate the robots as well as difficulty with troubleshooting problems [ 39 ]. Accordingly, the responsiveness of the robot system to operator input also positively affects ease of use [ 70 , 71 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Acceptance of Telepresence Robots in Higher Education

Lei

Clemente

Liu

et al. 2022

Int J of Soc Robotics

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While telepresence robots have increasingly become accepted in diverse settings, the research on their acceptance in educational contexts has been underdeveloped. This study analyzed how the use intention of telepresence robots can be influenced by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, and perceived risk for students, faculty, and staff in higher education. Survey data were collected from 60 participants with direct operator experience with a variety of telepresence robots deployed in a large research university in the Midwest region of the United States. Path analysis results indicated that perceived usefulness was the only significant direct predictor of use intention of telepresence robots. Both perceived ease of use and subjective norm had a significant positive effect on perceived usefulness. Subjective norm also had a significant positive indirect effect on use intention, mediated by perceived usefulness. Perceived risk had a negative effect on perceived ease of use. These findings indicated that the usefulness of robots was central to operators’ decisions to use telepresence robots. Therefore, design choice for telepresence robots should prioritize usefulness. Secondly, the design of telepresence robots should minimize complexity for the end user and minimize cognitive demand. Having nominal difficulty of use would also facilitate multiple embodiments by combining telepresence robots with other technologies to support more rich social interactions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Acceptance of Telepresence Robots in Higher Education

Lei

Clemente

Liu

et al. 2022

Int J of Soc Robotics

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“…Blossom is designed for flexibility through an open-ended design that allows users to customize its appearance and behaviors. The benefits of personalizing robot behaviors has been explored in HRI research [18,48,50,58,68] and some researchers have looked at allowing users to personalize a robot's outward appearance, usually through adornments [24,76,80]. This feature could also work in support of the so-called IKEA effect, which predicts that self-made creations are favorably valued over comparable mass-manufactured objects [55,75].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blossom

Suguitan

Hoffman

2019

J. Hum.-Robot Interact.

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Blossom is an open-source social robotics platform responding to three challenges in human-robot interaction (HRI) research: (1) Designing, manufacturing, and programming social robots requires a high level of technical knowledge; (2) social robot designs are fixed in appearance and movement capabilities, making them hard to adapt to a specific application; and (3) the use of rigid mechanisms and hard outer shells limits the robots' expressive capabilities. Addressing these challenges, Blossom aims at three design objectives: accessibility, flexibility, and expressiveness. The robot's mechanism can be quickly assembled and partially extended by end-users. Blossom's appearance is open-ended through handcrafted fabric exteriors created and customized by users. Smooth organic movements are achieved with tensile mechanisms, elastic components, and a soft exterior cover attached loosely to the body. Blossom's smartphone-based gesture generation requires neither programming nor character animation experience, allowing lay users to create their own behaviors. All elements in the design were conceived with a low barrier-of-entry in mind. The result is an accessible and customizable social robot for researchers. This article details the implementation of Blossom's design and demonstrates the platform's potential through four field deployment case studies.

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“…The existing evidence from design-oriented and survey/ interview-based studies of telepresence robots suggests that such robots can increase the agency, presence and social inclusion of remote students (e.g. Cha, Chen, and Mataric 2017;Fitter et al 2018). However, there is an apparent research gap related to substantiating these kinds of claims with micro-level interactional evidence (but outside classrooms, see Liao et al 2019).…”

Section: Coordinating Joint Attention In the Materials Ecology Of Video-mediated Instructional Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediated learning materials: visibility checks in telepresence robot mediated classroom interaction

Jakonen

Jauni

2021

Classroom Discourse

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Videoconferencing is increasingly used in education as a way to support distance learning. This article contributes to the emerging interactional literature on video-mediated educational interaction by exploring how a telepresence robot is used to facilitate remote participation in university-level foreign language teaching. A telepresence robot differs from commonly used videoconferencing set-ups in that it allows mobility and remote camera control. A remote student can thus move a classroom-based robot from a distance in order to shift attention between people, objects and environmental structures during classroom activities. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we focus on how participants manage telepresent remote students' visual access to classroom learning materials. In particular, we show how visibility checks are accomplished as a sequential and embodied practice in interaction between physically dispersed participants. Moreover, we demonstrate how participants conduct interactional work to make learning materials visible to the remote student by showing them and guiding the 'seeing' of materials. The findings portray some ways in which participants in video-mediated interaction display sensitivity to the possibility of intersubjective trouble and the recipient's visual perspective. Besides increasing understanding of visual and interactional practices in technology-rich learning environments, the findings can be applied in the pedagogical design of such environments.

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Evaluating the Effects of Personalized Appearance on Telepresence Robots for Education

Cited by 25 publications

References 1 publication

The Acceptance of Telepresence Robots in Higher Education

The Acceptance of Telepresence Robots in Higher Education

Blossom

Mediated learning materials: visibility checks in telepresence robot mediated classroom interaction

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