Understanding social robots: A user study on anthropomorphism

Hegel, Frank; Krach, Sören; Kircher, Tilo; Wrede, Britta; Sagerer, Gerhard

doi:10.1109/roman.2008.4600728

Cited by 95 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The familiarity thesis [6] would support the idea that the human first projects onto the robot mental models of similar agents he/she is already familiar with (ranging from animals to human adults, to pets and children).…”

Section: B) Cognitive Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dynamics of anthropomorphism in robotics

Lemaignan

Fink

Dillenbourg

2014

Proceedings of the 2014 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

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Abstract-While anthropomorphism in robotics is a commonly discussed trait of HRI, it paradoxically lacks formal grounds. Supported by an extensive literature review, a long-term field study and two other on-going experiments, this report gives a first overview of a formal model of anthromorphism that we are currently building. Going beyond the traditional perception of anthropomorphism as a static feature of a system, we propose to understand anthropomorphism as a dynamic, non-monotonic and context-dependent process, which evolves over time, and has deep cognitive implications. I. THE DYNAMICS OF ANTHROPOMORPHISMMany robotics researchers tend to believe that anthropomorphism describes a set of human-like features of a robot (like shape, speech capabilities, facial expression). We refer to these characteristics as the anthropomorphic design of the robot [1]. Anthropomorphism, on the other hand, refers to the social phenomenon that emerges from the interaction between a robot and an user. According to Epley et al. [2], this includes for instance emotional states, motivations, intentions ascribed by the user to the robot.So far, the HRI community has not much investigated how anthropomorphism in human-robot interactions evolves over time (during the process of adopting a robot, for instance). Anthropomorphism is traditionally perceived in robotics as a static feature that once observed during a short-term interaction reflects a sustaining social effect. Based on an literature review previously published [1], a long-term field study in a natural environment [3], as well as two on-going childrobot experiments, we believe that anthropomorphic effects do evolve over time in non-monotonic ways, and play a central role in sustaining engagement in human-robot interaction.We propose to formalize these dynamic effects into a model that we call the dynamics of anthromorphism. We hope that it may support further discussions and reflections on how anthromorphism impacts human-robot interaction on the long run, and also foster research on the affective bonds induced by anthorpomorphic projections on robots.As such, we propose to represent how the level of anthropomorphic effects (i.e. observable manifestations of anthropomorphism) evolves over a long-term human-robot interaction (Figure 1). By long-term interaction, we mean direct (nonmediated), repeated interaction with the same robot, over an extended period of time (typically longer than a week). Three phasesWe distinguish three main phases, depicted in different shades in Figure 1. INITIALIZATION Fig. 1. Dynamics of anthropomorphism. We distinguish three main phases: initialization, familiarization and stabilization, preceded by a pre-interaction phase. In the pre-interaction phase, users build an initial capital of anthropomorphism (ICA). Once the interaction starts, the level of anthropomorphism increases due to the novelty effect [4], and then decreases to reach a stabilized level of anthropomorphism (SLA). During the interaction, unpredicted behaviors of the robot (d...

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Section: B) Cognitive Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dynamics of anthropomorphism in robotics

Lemaignan

Fink

Dillenbourg

2014

Proceedings of the 2014 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

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“…For instance, Premack and Premack [33] demonstrated that people will anthropomorphize simple animated 2-dimensional shapes and attribute intentions to them if they move appropriately. Furthermore, mechanical devices such as robots are more readily anthropomorphized when they possess human-like faces and bodies [11,16].…”

Section: Must Intentions Be Attributed To a Robot?mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Investigation of Responses to Robot-Initiated Touch in a Nursing Context

Chen

King

Thomaz

et al. 2013

Int J of Soc Robotics

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Physical human-robot interaction has the potential to be useful in a number of domains, but this will depend on how people respond to the robot's actions. For some domains, such as healthcare, a robot is likely to initiate physical contact with a person's body. In order to investigate how people respond to this type of interaction, we conducted an experiment with 56 people in which a robotic nurse autonomously touched and wiped each participant's forearm. On average, participants had a favorable response to the first time the robot touched them. However, we found that the perceived intent of the robot significantly influenced people's responses. If people believed that the robot intended to clean their arms, the participants tended to respond more favorably than if they believed the robot intended to comfort them, even though the robot's manipulation behavior was the same. Our results suggest that roboticists should consider this social factor in addition to the mechanics of physical interaction. Surprisingly, we found that participants in our study responded less favorably when given a verbal warning prior to the robot's actions. In addition to these main results, we present post-hoc analyses of participants' galvanic skin responses (GSR), open-ended responses, attitudes towards robots, and responses to a second trial.

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“…The two robot types have contrasting attributesbiologically inspired robot is being developed with life-like multi-functions whereas the functionally designed robots aim for specialized functionality for certain use. Several researches have been done in comparison of the two robot types, and the results showed that people perceived familiarity, intelligence and acceptance of the robots differently [2], [3]. Likewise, Lee et al [5] conducted comparative studies between human-like robot and product-like robots both in Korea and Japan to examine the impact of robot design types and cultural aspects on people's acceptance of a robot.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Robot Design Approach on Product Evaluation, Product Usefulness and Purchase Intention

Lee¹,

Kang²,

Kim³

et al. 2016

Advanced Science and Technology Letters

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Abstract. Robot design approach can be classified into two: biologically inspired versus functionally designed. This study explored the effect of robot design types on product evaluation, product usefulness, and purchase intention. In the experiment, we compared a group of functionally designed robots having single functions with a biologically inspired robot having multifarious functions. The results showed that participants evaluated the functionally designed robot more positively than the biologically inspired robot on product evaluation and product usefulness. Moreover, participants were willing to purchase the functionally designed robot more than the biologically inspired robot. These results showed that robot designers and developers should take the appropriate design approach for a better human-robot interaction.

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Understanding social robots: A user study on anthropomorphism

Cited by 95 publications

References 24 publications

The dynamics of anthropomorphism in robotics

The dynamics of anthropomorphism in robotics

An Investigation of Responses to Robot-Initiated Touch in a Nursing Context

The Impact of Robot Design Approach on Product Evaluation, Product Usefulness and Purchase Intention

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