Human–robot interface design – the ‘Robot with a Tablet’ or ‘Robot only’, which one is better?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The new era of integrating robots with artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things has provided huge potential for service robots to play important roles in our daily lives. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate whether a robot should have a separate device to incorporate digital content or use its face to toggle between facial expressions and digital content. From the human–robot interface (HRI) design perspective, a robot with a tablet obviously is closer to a real human teacher using a tablet while teaching students in a classroom. However, limited research has been done to explore such HRI design and its impacts on human behaviours. A robot-facilitated storytelling learning system was developed in this study to evaluate the impact of HRI design on college students’ learning behaviours in two different conditions: ‘Robot with Tablet’ or ‘Robot only’. The results revealed that both learning conditions of HRI design benefited college students from knowledge acquisition of vocabulary and comprehension of story content. Furthermore, ‘Robot only’ which is more cost-effective was found to be as good as that of ‘Robot with Tablet’ for the students in terms of knowledge acquisition, cognitive load and learning fatigue.