Can a humanoid robot continue to draw attention in an office environment?

Abstract

This study focuses on the use of humanoid robots in office environments, and investigates whether a robot can maintain the attention of passersby after initiation of face-to-face contact. Drawing attention can be considered as a first step in improving the continuity of use of robots; such continuity is one factor in validating their social acceptance, which must be considered when disseminating robots in offices. In this study, we assume that the robot approaches and greets users in order to make the users aware of its presence and encourage them to use it. In particular, the robots used in this study convey various greetings along with three nonverbal indicators (no motion, random motion, and face-to-face contact) when a passerby at the office is close to the robot. For a one-week period, we validated the social acceptance of the robot by examining how these robot motions influenced the rate and continuity of a passerby's attention. The results revealed that face-to-face contact can draw a high degree of attention, and that the presence of the robot affects the continuity with which attention is drawn. Finally, the paper discusses implications for future robot design, in terms of drawing and maintaining high rates of attention from users.

Behavioral Assessment of a Humanoid Robot When Attracting Pedestrians in a Mall

“…In addition, the results of the previous studies indicated that men have a more positive attitude toward interacting with robots than women [ 37 , 38 ]. However, other studies that use the robot “Sota,” which is the same as used in the present study, [ 39 ] showed that women are more interested in the robot; this finding is consistent with our results. Therefore, the results suggest that biological sex difference in terms of the interest in the robots does not give a definite decision, but it may depend on the appearance of the robot.…”

“…Finally, it was determined that, when pedestrians are in a group, they are more likely to stop and are more willing to listen to the full message. Several examples of these observations have been reported in other studies [ 17 , 24 , 26 , 39 ]. These observations were thought to be caused by another person who draws the pedestrian to interact with the robot, and not by the robot itself [ 17 , 24 ].…”

“…In addition, the results of the previous studies indicated that men have a more positive attitude toward interacting with robots than women [37,38]. However, other studies that use the robot "Sota," which is the same as used in the present study, [39] showed that women are more inter-Fig. 12 Results of the duration when successfully making the pedestrians stop during in Experiment II.…”

Effects of robot gaze and voice human-likeness on users’ subjective perception, visual attention, and cerebral activity in voice conversations

“…In face-to-face conversations, individuals would look at their partner's eyes, mouth, or face to retrieve information about the speech contents, emotions, and attitudes (Degutyte & Astell, 2021). With regard to robots, their speech could effectively catch people's visual attention to initiate communications (Okafuji et al, 2020). A publicly speaking Pepper robot could maintain the attention of audiences when the audiences are interested in the speech (Bourguet, Xu, Zhang, Urakami, & Venture, 2020).…”