A robot at home – How affect, technology commitment, and personality traits influence user experience in an intelligent Robotics Apartment

Bernotat J, Eyssel FA. A robot at home – How affect, technology commitment, and personality traits influence user experience in an intelligent Robotics Apartment. In: Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). 2017: 641-646

A Review of Personality in Human Robot Interactions

Personality has been identified as a vital factor in understanding the quality of human robot interactions. Despite this the research in this area remains fragmented and lacks a coherent framework. This makes it difficult to understand what we know and identify what we do not. As a result our knowledge of personality in human robot interactions has not kept pace with the deployment of robots in organizations or in our broader society. To address this shortcoming, this paper reviews 83 articles and 84 separate studies to assess the current state of human robot personality research. This review: (1) highlights major thematic research areas, (2) identifies gaps in the literature, (3) derives and presents major conclusions from the literature and (4) offers guidance for future research.Comment: 70 pages, 2 figure

Can(’t) wait to have a robot at home? – Japanese and German users’ attitudes toward service robots in smart homes

Bernotat J, Eyssel FA. Can(’t) wait to have a robot at home? – Japanese and German users’ attitudes toward service robots in smart homes. In: Proceedings of the 27th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). 2018: 15-22

Does the personality of consumers influence the assessment of the experience of interaction with social robots?

In recent years, in response to the effects of Covid-19, there has been an increase in the use of social robots in service organisations, as well as in the number of interactions between consumers and robots. However, it is not clear how consumers are valuing these experiences or what the main drivers that shape them are. Furthermore, it is an open research question whether these experiences undergone by consumers can be affected by their own personality. This study attempts to shed some light on these questions and, to do so, an experiment is proposed in which a sample of 378 participants evaluate a simulated front-office service experience delivered by a social robot. The authors investigate the underlying process that explains the experience and find that cognitive-functional factors, emphasising efficiency, have practically the same relevance as emotional factors, emphasising stimulation. In addition, this research identifies the personality traits of the participants and explores their moderating role in the evaluation of the experience. The results reveal that each personality trait, estimated between high and low poles, generates different responses in the evaluation of the experience.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Birds of a Feather Flock Together: But do Humans and Robots? A Meta-Analysis of Human and Robot Personality Matching

Collaborative work between humans and robots holds great potential but, such potential is diminished should humans fail to accept robots as collaborators. One solution is to design robots to have a similar personality to their human collaborators. Typically, this is done by matching the human’s and robot’s personality using one or more of the Big Five Personality (BFI) traits. The results of this matching, however, have been mixed. This makes it difficult to know whether personality similarity promotes robot acceptance. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a systematic quantitative meta-analysis of 13 studies. Overall, the results support the assertion that matching personalities between humans and robots promotes robot acceptance.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/168397/1/Esterwood et al. 2021.pdfDescription of Esterwood et al. 2021.pdf : PreprintSEL

Understanding Anthropomorphism in Service Provision: A Meta-Analysis of Physical Robots, Chatbots, and other AI

An increasing number of firms introduce service robots, such as physical robots and virtual chatbots, to provide services to customers. While some firms use robots that resemble human beings by looking and acting humanlike to increase customers’ use intention of this technology, others employ machinelike robots to avoid uncanny valley effects, assuming that very humanlike robots may induce feelings of eeriness. There is no consensus in the service literature regarding whether customers’ anthropomorphism of robots facilitates or constrains their use intention. The present meta-analysis synthesizes data from 11,053 individuals interacting with service robots reported in 108 independent samples. The study synthesizes previous research to clarify this issue and enhance understanding of the construct. We develop a comprehensive model to investigate relationships between anthropomorphism and its antecedents and consequences. Customer traits and predispositions (e.g., computer anxiety), sociodemographics (e.g., gender), and robot design features (e.g., physical, nonphysical) are identified as triggers of anthropomorphism. Robot characteristics (e.g., intelligence) and functional characteristics (e.g., usefulness) are identified as important mediators, although relational characteristics (e.g., rapport) receive less support as mediators. The findings clarify contextual circumstances in which anthropomorphism impacts customer intention to use a robot. The moderator analysis indicates that the impact depends on robot type (i.e., robot gender) and service type (i.e., possession-processing service, mental stimulus-processing service). Based on these findings, we develop a comprehensive agenda for future research on service robots in marketing

How People’s Perception on Degree of Control Influences Human-Robot Interaction

Automated products that seem to be more sophisticated every day are invading the market. Gmail provides suggestions for emails responses and can even track important dates through emails and send a notification about it without the user's permission. As robot companions are just slowly starting to be available to the public, one must wonder, do people expect robots to have the same technology advancements as other technology tools such as smart phones? Is it really what people want? Some early research on control has been made in the Human Computer Interaction community by Shneiderman & Maes (1997) to discover how much control the user is ready to give up to an intelligent agent. This PhD does the same type of investigations for domestic robots by focussing on perception of control in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). To be able to conduct such an investigation, the user's perception of control is measured through the robot's level of autonomy. As this thesis will show, little research has been done in this area for domestic robot companions. After a first exploratory study was conducted to gain a better understanding of perception of control related to the user's preferred level of autonomy of the robot for a simple task (cleaning), three questionnaire studies have investigated what makes a task high critical or low critical, physical or cognitive. The results could then be used to design a full live investigation on how the level of criticality of a task influence the user's preference of the robot's level of autonomy. The results of this thesis show that in general people want robots to be more autonomous but they still want to have control over the robot for most tasks. People prefer to give instructions to the robot when a cognitive task is performed regardless of the criticality of the task, and for a low critical physical task that is entertainment-based. However, for a high critical physical task, the user prefers the robot to be fully autonomous even if they feel they have less control over the robot. This is explained by the way participants perceived the performance of the task. When the robot was fully autonomous, they felt the task was done faster and smoother than when they had to continuously provide instructions to the robot

A Meta-Analysis of Human Personality and Robot Acceptance in Human-Robot Interaction

Human personality has been identified as a predictor of robot acceptance in the human robot interaction (HRI) literature. Despite this, the HRI literature has provided mixed support for this assertion. To better understand the relationship between human personality and robot acceptance, this paper conducts a meta-analysis of 26 studies. Results found a positive relationship between human personality and robot acceptance. However, this relationship varied greatly by the specific personality trait along with the study sample’s age, gender diversity, task, and global region. This meta-analysis also identified gaps in the literature. Namely, additional studies are needed that investigate both the big five personality traits and other personality traits, examine a more diverse age range, and utilize samples from previously unexamined regions of the globe.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/165339/1/Esterwood et al. 2021 (one column).pdfDescription of Esterwood et al. 2021 (one column).pdf : Preprint one column versionSEL

Between Fear and Trust: Factors Influencing Older Adults' Evaluation of Socially Assistive Robots

Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) are expected to support autonomy, aging in place, and wellbeing in later life. For successful assimilation, it is necessary to understand factors affecting older adults Quality Evaluations (QEs) of SARs, including the pragmatic and hedonic evaluations and overall attractiveness. Previous studies showed that trust in robots significantly enhances QE, while technophobia considerably decreases it. The current study aimed to examine the relative impact of these two factors on older persons QE of SARs. The study was based on an online survey of 384 individuals aged 65 and above. Respondents were presented with a video of a robotic system for physical and cognitive training and filled out a questionnaire relating to that system. The results indicated a positive association between trust and QE and a negative association between technophobia and QE. A simultaneous exploration demonstrated that the relative impact of technophobia is significantly more substantial than that of trust. In addition, the pragmatic qualities of the robot were found to be more crucial to its QE than the social aspects of use. The findings suggest that implementing robotics technology in later life strongly depends on reducing older adults technophobia regarding the convenience of using SARs and highlight the importance of simultaneous explorations of facilitators and inhibitors

Developing an Autonomous Mobile Robotic Device for Monitoring and Assisting Older People

A progressive increase of the elderly population in the world has required technological solutions capable of improving the life prospects of people suffering from senile dementias such as Alzheimer's. Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) in the research field of elderly care is a solution that can ensure, through observation and monitoring of behaviors, their safety and improve their physical and cognitive health. A social robot can autonomously and tirelessly monitor a person daily by providing assistive tasks such as remembering to take medication and suggesting activities to keep the assisted active both physically and cognitively. However, many projects in this area have not considered the preferences, needs, personality, and cognitive profiles of older people. Moreover, other projects have developed specific robotic applications making it difficult to reuse and adapt them on other hardware devices and for other different functional contexts. This thesis presents the development of a scalable, modular, multi-tenant robotic application and its testing in real-world environments. This work is part of the UPA4SAR project ``User-centered Profiling and Adaptation for Socially Assistive Robotics''. The UPA4SAR project aimed to develop a low-cost robotic application for faster deployment among the elderly population. The architecture of the proposed robotic system is modular, robust, and scalable due to the development of functionality in microservices with event-based communication. To improve robot acceptance the functionalities, enjoyed through microservices, adapt the robot's behaviors based on the preferences and personality of the assisted person. A key part of the assistance is the monitoring of activities that are recognized through deep neural network models proposed in this work. The final experimentation of the project carried out in the homes of elderly volunteers was performed with complete autonomy of the robotic system. Daily care plans customized to the person's needs and preferences were executed. These included notification tasks to remember when to take medication, tasks to check if basic nutrition activities were accomplished, entertainment and companionship tasks with games, videos, music for cognitive and physical stimulation of the patient