There Once Was a Robot Storyteller: Measuring the Effects of Emotion and Non-verbal Behaviour

Abstract

Social Robots bear great potential to tell stories to human listeners. Through their embodiment and ability to display non-verbal and emotional behaviour, additional modalities can be used to transport the user into the story compared to traditional media such as books or audio books. Based on theoretical knowledge about the design of social robot storytellers and the analysis of human storytellers, we designed the behaviour of an emotional social robot storyteller and compared it to a neutral version of the robotic storyteller and the voice of a human storyteller represented by an audio book. Results suggest that the emotional robot is able to transport the participants equally well as the traditional audio book, while the neutral robot performed worse. We therefore claim, that emotional behaviour in the domain of robotic storytelling should be carefully designed to support the story rather then preventing a good transportation.