The Influence of Visible Cables and Story Content on Perceived Autonomy in Social Human–Robot Interaction

Abstract

From teaching technical skills to telling bedtime stories, social robots support various edutainment tasks that require smooth communication. Previous studies often emphasized the importance of the autonomy of social robots for those tasks. However, the cabling of robots with power sources and/ or host computers is often required due to technical restrictions. However, it is currently unclear if the cabling of robots makes a difference in perceived autonomy. Therefore, this study examined the influence of visible cables in different tasks on the perception of a social robot. In an online survey, participants evaluated videos of a social robot that was either equipped with a cable or not and told either a story with technical educational content or socially entertaining content. No significant differences were revealed between the cabled and the non-cabled robot, neither for the perceived autonomy nor for the associated concepts of the Godspeed questionnaire series. In addition, the story content did not influence perceived autonomy. However, the robot that told the technical content was perceived as significantly more intelligent and tended to be perceived as more likable than the robot that told the social content. Moreover, the interaction effect of cabling and story content for perceived safety just failed to reach the conventional level of significance. In the social content condition, the non-cabled robot tended to be perceived as less safe than the cabled robot. This was not true for the technical content condition. In conclusion, the results showed the importance of considering story content. Due to methodological limitations of the current study, namely, the lack of gestures accompanying the storytelling and the video-based approach, the missing effect of cabling in regard to perceived autonomy should be investigated in the future via real-life interaction studies.

Increased morality through social communication or decision situation worsens the acceptance of robo-advisors

“…Nevertheless, this study does reinforce the call for greater consideration of task-related factors (Mahmud et al, 2022). Our results are in line with research showing that the context determined the subjects' perception of the robot (Roesler et al, 2023;Seeger et al, 2021;Ehsan et al, 2021;de Visser et al, 2016;Cuijpers et al, 2011) and the robot's acceptance (Korn et al, 2021). Some researchers claim that task characteristics are stronger influencing factors in human-robot interactions than communication styles (Wright et al, 2022).…”

“…We also exploratory tested if the decision situation influences how subjects perceive the robot and follow its advice as well as further interaction effects between the factors communication and decision situation. This way, we acknowledge the context dependency of linguistic subtleties (Cox and Ooi, 2022;Clark et al, 2016) and robot's acceptance (Korn et al, 2021;Goetz et al, 2003) as well as the perception of a robot (Roesler et al, 2023;Seeger et al, 2021;Ehsan et al, 2021;de Visser et al, 2016;Cuijpers et al, 2011).…”

“…The characteristics of a scenario (e.g., content, task, uncertainty, or urgency) also influence perceptions of robots (including anthropomorphism, trust, likability, intelligence) (Roesler et al, 2023;Seeger et al, 2021;Ehsan et al, 2021;de Visser et al, 2016;Cuijpers et al, 2011). As these are possible mediating factors for the influence of social communication, interactions with the decision situation need to be considered.…”