Relationship between familiarity and humanness of robots – quantification of psychological impressions toward humanoid robots

Abstract

We investigate the relationships between familiarity and humanness of humanoids from psychological perspective of view. Two thousand six hundred and twenty-four people from their 10s to 70s in Japan evaluated familiarity and humanness of different 11 humanoids based on the psychological scales which are developed for evaluation of humanoids. Results showed that robot-like robots which have round shapes are evaluated higher in familiarity and lower in humanness than robot-like robots which have mechanic appearance. Androids which have totally human-like appearances are evaluated higher in humanness and familiarity than robots which are partly human-like, while one android was rated high in humanness but low in familiarity. Relatedly, repulsion which reflects a value toward the existence of humanoids bears a proportionate relationship to humanness. Higher humanness with humanoids related to higher repulsion. In sum, the relationship between familiarity and humanness is curvilinear, while repulsion and humanness shows a linear relationship. We discussed the importance of appearance of robots and interaction with robots to introduce robots toward ordinary people.