Robotic Psychology. What Do We Know about Human-Robot Interaction and What Do We Still Need to Learn?

“Robotization”, the integration of robots in human life will change human life drastically. In many situations, such as in the service sector, robots will become an integrative part of our lives. Thus, it is vital to learn from extant research on human-robot interaction (HRI). This article introduces robotic psychology that aims to bridge the gap between humans and robots by providing insights into particularities of HRI. It presents a conceptualization of robotic psychology and provides an overview of research on service-focused human-robot interaction. Theoretical concepts, relevant to understand HRI with are reviewed. Major achievements, shortcomings, and propositions for future research will be discussed

When Robots Enter Our Workplace: Understanding Employee Trust in Assistive Robots

This study is about assistive robots as internal service provider within the company Merck KGaA and examines how the physical appearance of a service representative (humanoid robot, android robot, human) affects employees’ trust. Based on the uncanny valley paradigm, we argue that employees’ trust is the lowest for the android robot and the highest for the human. Further, we will examine the effects of task complexity and requirements for self-disclosure on employees’ trust in assistive robots. According to script theory and media equation theory, we propose that high task complexity and high requirements for self-disclosure increase employees’ trust. We developed a research design to test our model by deploying a humanoid robot and an android robot within a company as robotic assistants in comparison to a human employee. In a next step, we will run a corresponding study with 300 employees

Social robots for older users: a possibility to support assessment and social interventions

In the last decades, various researches in the field of robotics have created numerous opportunities for innovative support of the older population. The goal of this work was to review and highlight how social robots can help the daily life of older people, and be useful also as assessment tools. We will underline the aspects of usability and acceptability of robotic supports in the psychosocial work with older persons. The actual usability of the system influences the perception of the ease of use only when the user has no or low experience, while expert users’ perception is related to their attitude towards the robot. This finding should be more deeply analysed because it may have a strong influence on the design of future interfaces for elderly-robot interaction. Robots can play an important role to tackle the societal challenge of the growing older population. The authors report some recent studies with older users, where it was demonstrated that the acceptability of robotics during daily life activities, and also in cognitive evaluation, could be supported by social robot

A truly human interface: interacting face-to-face with someone whose words are determined by a computer program

We use speech shadowing to create situations wherein people converse in person with a human whose words are determined by a conversational agent computer program. Speech shadowing involves a person (the shadower) repeating vocal stimuli originating from a separate communication source in real-time. Humans shadowing for conversational agent sources (e.g., chat bots) become hybrid agents (“echoborgs”) capable of face-to-face interlocution. We report three studies that investigated people’s experiences interacting with echoborgs and the extent to which echoborgs pass as autonomous humans. First, participants in a Turing Test spoke with a chat bot via either a text interface or an echoborg. Human shadowing did not improve the chat bot’s chance of passing but did increase interrogators’ ratings of how human-like the chat bot seemed. In our second study, participants had to decide whether their interlocutor produced words generated by a chat bot or simply pretended to be one. Compared to those who engaged a text interface, participants who engaged an echoborg were more likely to perceive their interlocutor as pretending to be a chat bot. In our third study, participants were naïve to the fact that their interlocutor produced words generated by a chat bot. Unlike those who engaged a text interface, the vast majority of participants who engaged an echoborg did not sense a robotic interaction. These findings have implications for android science, the Turing Test paradigm, and human–computer interaction. The human body, as the delivery mechanism of communication, fundamentally alters the social psychological dynamics of interactions with machine intelligence

Whom Do You Want to Be Friends With: An Extroverted or an Introverted Avatar? Impacts of the Uncanny Valley Effect and Conversational Cues

With the rapid growth of social virtual reality platforms, an increasing number of people will be interacting with others as avatars in virtual environments. Therefore, it is essential to develop a better understanding of the factors that could impact initial personality assessments and how they affect the willingness of people to befriend one another. Thin-slice judgment constitutes a quick judgment of a personality based on an avatar, and it could be impacted by the avatar’s appearance, particularly if the avatar elicits an uncanny valley effect that brings negative emotions such as eerieness. However, personality judgments and friendship decisions could also be influenced by social cues, such as conversational style. This experimental study investigated how these factors impact willingness to make friends with others in a virtual world. Drawing upon the uncanny valley effect and thin-slice judgment, this study examined how different levels of realism and conversational cues influence trustworthiness, likeability, and the willingness to be a friend. Furthermore, the current study tried to shed light on the interaction effects of realism and conversational cues to the dependent variables. In other words, this study investigated how this eventually influences one’s willingness to be a friend under the thin-slice judgment when personality judgments result from the negative feeling (i.e., eeriness) of the uncanny valley effect and social cues are conflicted. To this end, a 2 (realism: cartoonish vs. hyper-realistic) x 2 (conversational cues: extroverted vs. introverted) between-subjects online experiment was conducted. The results showed that trustworthiness and likeability significantly impacted the willingness to be a friend. Furthermore, realism and conversational cues marginally affected the willingness to be a friend. Keywords: uncanny valley effect, thin-slice judgment, avatar, personality judgment, willingness to be a frien

Should Robots Blush?

Social interaction is the most complex challenge in daily life. Inevitably, social robots will encounter interactions that are outside their competence. This raises a basic design question: how can robots fail gracefully in social interaction? The characteristic human response to social failure is embarrassment. Usefully, embarrassment signals both recognition of a problem and typically enlists sympathy and assistance to resolve it. This could enhance robot acceptability and provides an opportunity for interactive learning. Using a speculative design approach we explore how, when and why robots might communicate embarrassment. A series of specially developed cultural probes, scenario development and low-fidelity prototyping exercises suggest that: embarrassment is relevant for managing a diverse range of social scenarios, impacts on both humanoid and non-humanoid robot design, and highlights the critical importance of understanding interactional context. We conclude that embarrassment is fundamental to competent social functioning and provides a potentially fertile area for interaction design

로봇의 고개를 움직이는 동작과 타이밍이 인간과 로봇의 상호작용에 미치는 효과

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 인문대학 협동과정 인지과학전공, 2023. 2. Sowon Hahn.In recent years, robots with artificial intelligence capabilities have become ubiquitous in our daily lives. As intelligent robots are interacting closely with humans, social abilities of robots are increasingly more important. In particular, nonverbal communication can enhance the efficient social interaction between human users and robots, but there are limitations of behavior expression. In this study, we investigated how minimal head movements of the robot influence human-robot interaction. We newly designed a robot which has a simple shaped body and minimal head movement mechanism. We conducted an experiment to examine participants' perception of robots different head movements and timing. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three movement conditions, head nodding (A), head shaking (B) and head tilting (C). Each movement condition included two timing variables, prior head movement of utterance and simultaneous head movement with utterance. For all head movement conditions, participants' perception of anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability and intelligence were higher compared to non-movement (utterance only) condition. In terms of timing, when the robot performed head movement prior to utterance, perceived naturalness was rated higher than simultaneous head movement with utterance. The findings demonstrated that head movements of the robot positively affects user perception of the robot, and head movement prior to utterance can make human-robot conversation more natural. By implementation of head movement and movement timing, simple shaped robots can have better social interaction with humans.최근 인공지능 로봇은 일상에서 흔하게 접할 수 있는 것이 되었다. 인간과의 교류가 늘어남에 따라 로봇의 사회적 능력은 더 중요해지고 있다. 인간과 로봇의 사회적 상호작용은 비언어적 커뮤니케이션을 통해 강화될 수 있다. 그러나 로봇은 비언어적 제스처의 표현에 제약을 갖는다. 또한 로봇의 응답 지연 문제는 인간이 불편한 침묵의 순간을 경험하게 한다. 본 연구를 통해 로봇의 고개 움직임이 인간과 로봇의 상호작용에 어떤 영향을 미치는지 알아보았다. 로봇의 고개 움직임을 탐구하기 위해 단순한 형상과 고개를 움직이는 구조를 가진 로봇을 새롭게 디자인하였다. 이 로봇을 활용하여 로봇의 머리 움직임과 타이밍이 참여자에게 어떻게 지각되는지 실험하였다. 참여자들은 3가지 움직임 조건인, 끄덕임 (A), 좌우로 저음 (B), 기울임 (C) 중 한 가지 조건에 무작위로 선정되었다. 각각의 고개 움직임 조건은 두 가지 타이밍(음성보다 앞선 고개 움직임, 음성과 동시에 일어나는 고개 움직임)의 변수를 갖는다. 모든 타입의 고개 움직임에서 움직임이 없는 조건과 비교하여 로봇의 인격화, 활동성, 호감도, 감지된 지능이 향상된 것을 관찰하였다. 타이밍은 로봇의 음성보다 고개 움직임이 앞설 때 자연스러움이 높게 지각되는 것으로 관찰되었다. 결과적으로, 로봇의 고개 움직임은 사용자의 지각에 긍정적인 영향을 주며, 앞선 타이밍의 고개 움직임이 자연스러움을 향상시키는 것을 확인하였다. 고개를 움직이는 동작과 타이밍을 통해 단순한 형상의 로봇과 인간의 상호작용이 향상될 수 있음을 본 연구를 통해 확인하였다.Chapter 1. Introduction 1 1.1. Motivation 1 1.2. Literature Review and Hypotheses 3 1.3. Purpose of Study 11 Chapter 2. Experiment 13 2.1. Methods 13 2.2. Results 22 2.3. Discussion 33 Chapter 3. Conclusion 35 Chapter 4. General Discussion 37 4.1. Theoretical Implications 37 4.2. Practical Implications 38 4.3. Limitations and Future work 39 References 41 Appendix 53 Abstract in Korean 55석

Human or Robot?: Investigating voice, appearance and gesture motion realism of conversational social agents

Research on creation of virtual humans enables increasing automatization of their behavior, including synthesis of verbal and nonverbal behavior. As the achievable realism of different aspects of agent design evolves asynchronously, it is important to understand if and how divergence in realism between behavioral channels can elicit negative user responses. Specifically, in this work, we investigate the question of whether autonomous virtual agents relying on synthetic text-to-speech voices should portray a corresponding level of realism in the non-verbal channels of motion and visual appearance, or if, alternatively, the best available realism of each channel should be used. In two perceptual studies, we assess how realism of voice, motion, and appearance influence the perceived match of speech and gesture motion, as well as the agent\u27s likability and human-likeness. Our results suggest that maximizing realism of voice and motion is preferable even when this leads to realism mismatches, but for visual appearance, lower realism may be preferable. (A video abstract can be found at https://youtu.be/arfZZ-hxD1Y.

Osobni prostor i njegove transformacije u tehnološkom kontekstu

Context and relevance of the research: The creation of autonomous computer agents and humanoid robots is becoming a priority subject of research in various fields of knowledge such as evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, neurobiology, engineering, social robotics, linguistics, philosophy, etc. The gap between technological, natural science and humanitarian-scientific discourse reveals the need for dialogue, scientific discussions, and the development of a common conceptual-categorical system in information technology and humanitarian knowledge. The expansion of the continuum of artificial realities actualizes anthropological problems, including the question of a new ontological status of human, of personal space, within which all aspects and projections of human existence undergo significant changes. Personal space as an ontological phenomenon of Self interacts with different environments (nature, society, culture, extended reality (XR)) has borders with them and in each partially functions. The research aims to develop methodological foundations for the study of personal space, formulate the author’s definition of personal space, and identify conceptual methodological constructs to analyze the transformation of personal space in the development of information technology and social robotics. Used methodology: the principle of integrity, the principle of duality of being, typology of relations I-Thou and I-It by Martin Buber and Semyon L. Frank, system analysis, convergent approach. Key findings: The development of information technologies and social robotics has opened a new stage in forming the technological context of human entry into symbiotic relations, where the boundaries between the natural and the artificial are blurred, which indicates the need to elaborate a convergent approach to studying interdisciplinary problems in technological and humanitarian knowledge. The author’s definition of personal space as a holistic phenomenon of Self is offered for use as a methodological tool to study its changes in the technological context.Kontekst i važnost istraživanja: Stvaranje autonomnih računalnih agenata i humanoidnih robota postaje prioritetna tema istraživanja u raznim poljima znanja. Jaz između tehnološkog i humanitarnog diskursa pokazuje potrebu za dijalogom i razvojem zajedničkog pojmovno-kategorijskog sustava u informacijskoj tehnologiji i humanitarnom znanju. Širenje kontinuuma umjetne stvarnosti aktualizira antropološke probleme, uključujući pitanje novog ontološkog statusa osobe, osobnog prostora, unutar kojeg svi aspekti i projekcije ljudskog postojanja prolaze kroz značajne promjene. Osobni prostor kao ontološki fenomen sebstva komunicira s različitim okruženjima (priroda, društvo, kultura, proširena stvarnost [extended reality – XR]), ima granice s njima i djelomično funkcionira u svakoj. Svrha studije: razviti metodološku osnovu za proučavanje osobnog prostora, formulirati autorovu definiciju osobnog prostora i identificirati konceptualne metodološke konstrukcije za analizu transformacije osobnog prostora u razvoju informacijske tehnologije i socijalne robotike. Upotrijebljena metodologija: načelo integriteta, načelo dualnosti bića, tipologija odnosa (M. Buber, S. Frank), sistemska analiza, konvergentni pristup. Glavni zaključci: Razvoj informacijske tehnologije i socijalne robotike otvorio je novu fazu u formiranju tehnološkog konteksta ulaska čovjeka u simbiotske odnose, gdje su granice između prirodnog i umjetnog nejasne, što ukazuje na potrebu za razvojem konvergentnog pristupa proučavanju interdisciplinarnih problema tehnološkog i humanitarnog znanja. Autorska definicija osobnog prostora kao integralnog fenomena sebstva predlaže se kao metodološki alat za proučavanje njegovih promjena u tehnološkom kontekstu