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

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