Two is better than one: Apologies from two robots are preferred

Abstract

Although the capabilities of service robots are increasing, avoiding any mistakes is difficult. Therefore, strategies for mitigating mistakes, such as apology behavior designs, are essential for service robots. Past studies reported that costly apology is perceived as more sincere than non-costly ones and more acceptable. To increase the apology cost in robot service situations, we thought that using multiple robots would increase the perceived costs in the of financial, physical, and time costs. Therefore, we focused on the number of robots who apologize for their mistakes as well as their individual, specific roles and behaviors during such apologies. We investigated the differences in perceived impressions toward apologies from two robots (the main robot that makes a mistake and apologizes and a sub-robot that also apologizes) and an apology from just one robot (only the main robot) through a web survey with 168 valid participants. The experiment results showed that the participants significantly preferred and positively evaluated apologies from two robots more than one robot in the context of forgiveness, negative word-of-mouth, trust, and intention to use. We also conducted another web survey with 430 valid participants to investigate the effects of different roles for the sub-robot: apologize-only, cleaning-up-only, and both actions. The experimental results showed that the participants significantly preferred and positively evaluated both actions in the context of forgiveness and reliable/competent perspectives.

The Unknown World of My Stuffed Animal: Effects of the Presentation of Social Networks in Virtual Space on the Social Presence of Stuffed Animals

“…Previous studies have mainly focused on enhancing social presence through their appearance and functions of agents (Liu et al, 2022;Lohse et al, 2008;MacDorman & Ishiguro, 2006;Song & Luximon, 2020;Straub, 2016;Takahashi et al, 2022). There were also several studies showing that communication between multiple agents and humans attracts more human attention than communication between single agents and humans, because highlighting the social connections between agents improves human imagination towards the agents (Iio et al, 2017;Okada et al, 2023;Yoshikawa et al, 2017).…”

“…We expected that presenting a social background to the stuffed animal's owner would increase the social presence of the stuffed animal to the owner. Previous studies have shown that the social presence of a robot improved when multiple robots were present, compared to when a single robot was present (Iio et al, 2017;Okada et al, 2023;Yoshikawa et al, 2017). However, to our knowledge, no study has examined whether presenting owners with a scene of an agent's computer generated (CG) avatar interacting with other agent avatars in a virtual space improves the agent's social presence.…”

Simultaneous Dialogue Services Using Multiple Semiautonomous Robots in Multiple Locations by a Single Operator: A Field Trial on Souvenir Recommendation

“…Studies indicate that coordinated interaction between multiple robots can motivate conversations, even when speech recognition faces challenges [16], [17]. Other research highlights the enhancement of emotional aspects, such as cuteness [18] or apology [19], through the use of multiple robots. Conversely, for the operator, a study suggests that using multiple robots can improve telepresence [20].…”