The Influence of Robot Designs on Human Compliance and Emotion: A Virtual Reality Study in the Context of Future Public Transport

Abstract

As robots enter everyday environments, they start performing tasks originally performed by humans. One field of application is the public transport sector. The deployment of autonomous transport systems comes with a lack of human contact persons for help, guidance, and crowd management. This elicits challenges regarding redirecting and managing passengers. Current solutions on platforms can be replaced or enriched with service robots whose task includes crowd management as well as social interaction. This study investigates how the human-likeness of a robot influences the compliance and emotions of public transport users. A Virtual Reality experiment was conducted (N=33) to evaluate two different robot designs in a bus stop boarding scenario. The two robot designs differ in terms of humanoid appearance. In different experimental trials, participants had to perform a given task that was nullified by instructions from one of the two robots. Additionally, the dissonance of the situation was altered so that the environment either justified the robot's interference or not. Compliant behavior, pleasure, and arousal ratings, as well as task processing times were recorded. The experiment included an individual interview and a post-study questionnaire. The results suggest that future deployment of service robots has the potential to redirect passengers. In dissonant situations, clear reasoning must be given to make the robot effective. However, the robot's visual appearance has a more substantial impact on arousal and subjective preferences than on evoked behavior. The study implies that the presence of a service robot can influence peoples’ choices and gives hints about the importance of giving a reason. However, objectively, the level of the robot's humanoid appearance did not make a difference.

A Compliance–Reactance Framework for Evaluating Human-Robot Interaction

“…Similarly, cultural differences can be inferred from using the same robots issuing the same cues in comparable settings but in different locations. In this light, data on compliance can be used to investigate the magnitude of effects such as physical robot appearance ( Goetz et al, 2003 ; Herzog et al, 2022 ), contextual factors ( Boos et al, 2020 ) or different behaviour cues ( Reinhardt et al, 2020 ) on human reactions. Compliance data could thus help to refine context-adaptive behaviour by accumulating data on factors influencing people’s willingness to comply with a given cue.…”

“…Robot-related factors account for features, such as the degree of anthropomorphism and the corresponding influences on its interaction with people ( Herzog et al, 2022 ). Silvia (2005) found that when attributes are shared by a persuasive agent and the person to be persuaded, this increases compliance and liking as well as reduces resistance by rendering the persuasive attempt less threatening.…”

“…The compliance–reliance paradigm has been applied before in research on HRI, including research on a robot’s tasks ( Boos et al, 2020 ), varying motion cues at a narrow passage ( Reinhardt et al, 2020 ), as well as a robot’s appearance and dissonance with its recommendations ( Herzog et al, 2022 ). However, there is still no complete theoretical consideration of a compliance–reactance model for application in HRI to date.…”

Making emergent technologies more tangible - Effects of presentation form on user perceptions in the context of automated mobility

“…In the context of humanoid robots, several studies have employed VR simulations as a proxy for real humanrobot interactions. For example, Herzog et al (2022)…”