Assessing the effect of persuasive robots interactive social cues on users’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance

Research in the field of social robotics suggests that enhancing social cues in robots can elicit more social responses in users. It is however not clear how users respond socially to persuasive social robots and whether such reactions will be more pronounced when the robots feature more interactive social cues. In the current research, we examine social responses towards persuasive attempts provided by a robot featuring different numbers of interactive social cues. A laboratory experiment assessed participants’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance toward a persuasive robot that either presented users with: no interactive social cues (random head movements and random social praises), low number of interactive social cues (head mimicry), or high number of interactive social cues (head mimicry and proper timing for social praise). Results show that a persuasive robot with the highest number of interactive social cues invoked lower reactance and was liked more than the robots in the other two conditions. Furthermore, results suggest that trusting beliefs towards persuasive robots can be enhanced by utilizing praise as presented by social robots in no interactive social cues and high number of interactive social cues conditions. However, interactive social cues did not contribute to higher compliance

Assessing the effect of persuasive robots interactive social cues on users’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance

Research in the field of social robotics suggests that enhancing social cues in robots can elicit more social responses in users. It is however not clear how users respond socially to persuasive social robots and whether such reactions will be more pronounced when the robots feature more interactive social cues. In the current research, we examine social responses towards persuasive attempts provided by a robot featuring different numbers of interactive social cues. A laboratory experiment assessed participants’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance toward a persuasive robot that either presented users with: no interactive social cues (random head movements and random social praises), low number of interactive social cues (head mimicry), or high number of interactive social cues (head mimicry and proper timing for social praise). Results show that a persuasive robot with the highest number of interactive social cues invoked lower reactance and was liked more than the robots in the other two conditions. Furthermore, results suggest that trusting beliefs towards persuasive robots can be enhanced by utilizing praise as presented by social robots in no interactive social cues and high number of interactive social cues conditions. However, interactive social cues did not contribute to higher compliance

Investigating the effect of social cues on social agency judgement

To advance the research area of social robotics, it is important to understand the effect of different social cues on the perceived social agency to a robot. This paper evaluates three sets of verbal and nonverbal social cues (emotional intonation voice, facial expression and head movement) demonstrated by a social agent delivering several messages. A convenience sample of 18 participants interacted with SociBot, a robot that can demonstrate such cues, experienced in sequence seven sets of combinations of social cues. After each interaction, participants rated the robot's social agency (assessing its resemblance to a real person, and the extent to which they judged it to be like a living creature). As expected, adding social cues led to higher social agency judgments; especially facial expression was connected to higher social agency judgments

Interaction design for rehabiliation

\u3cp\u3eWell-known trends pertaining to the aging of population and the rising costs of healthcare motivate the development of rehabilitation technology. There is a considerable body of work in this area including efforts to make serious games, virtual reality and robotic applications. While innovative technologies have been introduced over the years, and often researchers produce promising experimental results, these technologies have not yet delivered the anticipated benefits. The causes for this apparent failure are evident when looking a closer look at the case of stroke rehabilitation, which is one of the heaviest researched topics for developing rehabilitation technologies. It is argued that improvements should be sought by centering the design on an understanding of patient needs, allowing patients, therapists and care givers in general to personalize solutions to the need of patients, effective feedback and motivation strategies to be implemented, and an in depth understanding of the socio-Technical system in which the rehabilitation technology will be embedded. These are classic challenges that human computer interaction (HCI) researchers have been dealing with for years, which is why the field of rehabilitation technology requires considerable input from HCI researchers, and which explains the growing number of relevant HCI publications pertaining to rehabilitation. The talk reviews related research carried out at the Eindhoven University of Technology together with collaborating institutes, which has examined the value of tangible user interfaces and embodied interaction in rehabilitation, how designing playful interactions or games with a functional purpose., feedback design. I shall discuss the work we have done to develop rehabilitation technologies for the TagTrrainer system in the doctoral research of Daniel Tetteroo [2,3,4] and the explorations on wearable solutions in the doctoral research of Wang Qi.[5,6]. With our research being design driven and explorative, I will discuss also the current state of the art for the field and the challenges that need to be addressed for human computer interaction research to make a larger impact in the domain of rehabilitation technology.\u3c/p\u3

Ambient intelligence: vision, research and life

This paper evaluates the progress in the field of Ambient Intelligence since its early days. It discusses the extent to which earlier visions of Ambient Intelligence have materialized arguing that to a large extent we already live in an era of Ambient Intelligence, despite that ‘true intelligence’ appears to remain elusive. We examine the extent to which this is so, focusing on shifting mind-sets and ambitions for researchers in the last years. We discuss the various reincarnations of the vision from a historical and societal perspective, together with some of the critiques leveled against it. With many research challenges still remaining open, we discuss how Ambient Intelligence research can be aligned to contemporary societal needs. Particularly important is to create mechanisms that will enable people to interact and benefit from the envisioned technological infrastructure avoiding some of the dangers that embedding computational intelligence in our physical environment brings about. Observing the diversification of research to address different application areas, we note how the impetus towards Ambient Intelligence needs to be renewed with a uniting challenge that transcends the development of technological infrastructure