Views from Within a Narrative: Evaluating Long-Term Human–Robot Interaction in a Naturalistic Environment Using Open-Ended Scenarios

Abstract

This article describes the prototyping of human–robot interactions in the University of Hertfordshire (UH) Robot House. Twelve participants took part in a long-term study in which they interacted with robots in the UH Robot House once a week for a period of 10 weeks. A prototyping method using the narrative framing technique allowed participants to engage with the robots in episodic interactions that were framed using narrative to convey the impression of a continuous long-term interaction. The goal was to examine how participants responded to the scenarios and the robots as well as specific robot behaviours, such as agent migration and expressive behaviours. Evaluation of the robots and the scenarios were elicited using several measures, including the standardised System Usability Scale, an ad hoc Scenario Acceptance Scale, as well as single-item Likert scales, open-ended questionnaire items and a debriefing interview. Results suggest that participants felt that the use of this prototyping technique allowed them insight into the use of the robot, and that they accepted the use of the robot within the scenario.

Prototyping realistic long-term human-robot interaction for the study of agent migration

“…The NEIS scenario prototyping framework was an improvement over the Integrated Episodic Scenario (IES) framework [20] proposed and validated previously, to provide a means for prototyping immersive episodic interaction scenarios for open-ended HRI study. This is accomplished by using an overall narrative arc to link the episodic scenarios together, forming a chain of meaningful events that participants can relate to and experience during the trials.…”

“…The UH Robot House (RH) is a residential house that has been adapted to provide a real-life domestic setting for the study of HRI [20][21] [22][23] and the development of smarthome technology [24] for robot-assisted living [25]. It has been equipped with a real-time electrical energy monitoring system to detect the activation and de-activation of common household electrical appliances such as the TVs, microwaves, computers, table lamps etc.…”

“…Participant responses to the overall scenario were measured using a Scenario Acceptance Scale which is described in appendix Scenario Evaluation Scale in [20] and intended to measure the participants' acceptance of the robot within the scenario. It consists of 10 Likert scale items, and is scored so that a middle "neutral" response on all items would receive a score of 50.…”

“…These questions were used in a previous study and are described in [20]. Participants were asked to complete these after Session 2, 4, 7 and 8.…”

“… Its ability to continue a task which it had started in a different body These categories were based on open-ended responses to similar questions in previous studies investigating migration (for instance [20][27] [28]) asked after all the 9 sessions had been completed, and was part of an evaluation where the participants were asked to consider the study as a whole. Finally, participants were also asked two open-ended questions in the questionnaire: "Did you feel as if you were interacting with the same companion in the different robot bodies?…”