Comparing the Effects of Social Robots and Virtual Agents on Exercising Motivation

Schneider S, Kummert F. Comparing the Effects of Social Robots and Virtual Agents on Exercising Motivation. In: Social Robotics. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 11357. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2018: 451-461

Judgment of the Humanness of an Interlocutor Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Despite tremendous advances in artificial language synthesis, no machine has so far succeeded in deceiving a human. Most research focused on analyzing the behavior of “good” machine. We here choose an opposite strategy, by analyzing the behavior of “bad” humans, i.e., humans perceived as machine. The Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence features humans and artificial agents trying to convince judges on their humanness via computer-mediated communication. Using this setting as a model, we investigated here whether the linguistic behavior of human subjects perceived as non-human would enable us to identify some of the core parameters involved in the judgment of an agents' humanness. We analyzed descriptive and semantic aspects of dialogues in which subjects succeeded or failed to convince judges of their humanness. Using cognitive and emotional dimensions in a global behavioral characterization, we demonstrate important differences in the patterns of behavioral expressiveness of the judges whether they perceived their interlocutor as being human or machine. Furthermore, the indicators of interest displayed by the judges were predictive of the final judgment of humanness. Thus, we show that the judgment of an interlocutor's humanness during a social interaction depends not only on his behavior, but also on the judge himself. Our results thus demonstrate that the judgment of humanness is in the eye of the beholder

Emotional design and human-robot interaction

Recent years have shown an increase in the importance of emotions applied to the Design field - Emotional Design. In this sense, the emotional design aims to elicit (e.g., pleasure) or prevent (e.g., displeasure) determined emotions, during human product interaction. That is, the emotional design regulates the emotional interaction between the individual and the product (e.g., robot). Robot design has been a growing area whereby robots are interacting directly with humans in which emotions are essential in the interaction. Therefore, this paper aims, through a non-systematic literature review, to explore the application of emotional design, particularly on Human-Robot Interaction. Robot design features (e.g., appearance, expressing emotions and spatial distance) that affect emotional design are introduced. The chapter ends with a discussion and a conclusion.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

A systematic review of attitudes, anxiety, acceptance, and trust towards social robots

As social robots become more common, there is a need to understand how people perceive and interact with such technology. This systematic review seeks to estimate people’s attitudes toward, trust in, anxiety associated with, and acceptance of social robots; as well as factors that are associated with these beliefs. Ninety-seven studies were identified with a combined sample of over 13,000 participants and a standardized score was computed for each in order to represent the valence (positive, negative, or neutral) and magnitude (on a scale from 1 to − 1) of people’s beliefs about robots. Potential moderating factors such as the robots’ domain of application and design, the type of exposure to the robot, and the characteristics of potential users were also investigated. The findings suggest that people generally have positive attitudes towards social robots and are willing to interact with them. This finding may challenge some of the existing doubt surrounding the adoption of robotics in social domains of application but more research is needed to fully understand the factors that influence attitudes

The Uncanny Valley of the Virtual (Animal) Robot

In this paper we explore whether the uncanny valley effect, which is found for human-like appearances, can also be found for animal-like virtual characters such as virtual robots and other types of virtual animals. In contrast to studies that investigate human-like appearance, there is much less information about the effects concerning how a virtual character’s animal-likeness influences their users’ perception. In total, 162 participants evaluated six different virtual panda designs in an online questionnaire. Participants were asked to rate different panda faces in terms of their familiarity, commonality, naturalness, attractiveness, interestingness, and animateness. The results show that a robot animal is perceived as less familiar, common, attractive, and natural. The robot animal is interesting and animate to users, but no big differences with the other images are found. We propose future applications for the human-(animal) robot interaction as tutorial agents in videogames, virtual reality, simulation robot labs using real-time facial animation.In this paper we explore whether the uncanny valley effect, which is found for human-like appearances, can also be found for animal-like virtual characters such as virtual robots and other types of virtual animals. In contrast to studies that investigate human-like appearance, there is much less information about the effects concerning how a virtual character’s animal-likeness influences their users’ perception. In total, 162 participants evaluated six different virtual panda designs in an online questionnaire. Participants were asked to rate different panda faces in terms of their familiarity, commonality, naturalness, attractiveness, interestingness, and animateness. The results show that a robot animal is perceived as less familiar, common, attractive, and natural. The robot animal is interesting and animate to users, but no big differences with the other images are found. We propose future applications for the human-(animal) robot interaction as tutorial agents in videogames, virtual reality, simulation robot labs using real-time facial animation

Creating Humanlike Chatbots: What Chatbot Developers Could Learn from Webcare Employees in Adopting a Conversational Human Voice

Currently, conversations with chatbots are perceived as unnatural and impersonal. One way to enhance the feeling of humanlike responses is by implementing an engaging communication style (i.e., Conversational Human Voice (CHV); Kelleher 2009) which positively affects people’s perceptions of the organization. This communication style contributes to the effectiveness of online communication between organizations and customers (i.e., webcare), and is of high relevance to chatbot design and development. This project aimed to investigate how insights on the use of CHV in organizations’ messages and the perceptions of CHV can be implemented in customer service automation. A corpus study was conducted to investigate which linguistic elements are used in organizations’ messages. Subsequently, an experiment was conducted to assess to what extent linguistic elements contribute to the perception of CHV. Based on these two studies, we investigated whether the amount of CHV can be identified automatically. These findings could be used to design humanlike chatbots that use a natural and personal communication style like their human conversation partner