Abstract
Communication robots, such as robotic salespeople and guide robots, are increasingly becoming involved in various aspects of people's everyday lives. However, it is still unclear what types of robot behavior are most effective for such purposes. In this research, we focused on a robotic salesperson. We believe that people often ignore what such robots have to say owing to their weak social presence. Thus, these robots must behave in ways that attract attention encouraging people to nod or reply when the robots speak. In order to identify suitable behaviors, we conducted two experiments. First, we conducted a field experiment in a shop in a traditional Kyoto shopping street to observe customers' real-world interactions with a robotic salesperson. Here, we found that the first impression given by the robot had a crucial influence on its subsequent conversations with most customer groups and that it was important for the robot to indicate it could understand how much attention customers were paying to the robot in the early stages of its interactions if it was to persuade customers to respond to what it said. Although the field experiment enabled us to observe natural interactions, it also included many external factors. In order to validate some of our findings without the involving these factors, we further conducted a laboratory experiment to investigate whether having the robot look back at the participants when they looked at it increased their perception that the robot was aware of their actions. These results supported the findings of the field experiment. Thus, we can conclude that demonstrating that a robot can recognize and respond to human behavior is important if it is to engage with people and persuade them to nod and reply to its comments.
Highlights
We believe that the impression made by the robot at the beginning of the interaction had a crucial influence on the subsequent conversation for most customer groups
This paper has focused on encouraging customers to respond to a robotic salesperson’s initial utterances
We conducted two experiments to investigate the initial stages of human–robot interactions, namely a field experiment and a laboratory experiment, in order to investigate what types of behaviors the robot should adopt and when it should perform them
Summary
Several attempts have been made to integrate robots that can communicate with people into different aspects of daily life (Shiomi et al, 2006; Yamazaki et al, 2008; Gehle et al, 2014) because robots are seen as more engaging than animated characters and are perceived as more credible and informative as well as more enjoyable to interact with (Kidd and Breazeal, 2004).Showing a Robot’s Perceptual AbilityMany studies have considered ways to utilize these types of robots. Several researchers have developed robots that can recognize human social behaviors and take advantage of these to attract attention (Gaschler et al, 2012; Das et al, 2015; Fischer et al, 2015) These types of behaviors are not always effective in different aspects of daily life. Some researchers developed a robot that can recognize social behavior recognition of human and attract the attention depending on typical social behaviors of human (Gaschler et al, 2012; Das et al, 2015; Fischer et al, 2015) These kind of behaviors are not efficient in every aspects of daily life
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
