Süssenbach L, Pitsch K, Berger I, Riether N, Kummert F. "Can you answer questions, Flobi?": Interactionally defining a robot’s competence as a fitness instructor. In: Proceedings of the 21th IEEE International Symposium in Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2012). 2012.Users draw on four sources to judge a robot’s
competence: (1) the robot’s voice, (2) physical appearance of
and (3) the interaction experience with the robot but also (4)
the relationship between the robot’s physical appearance and
its conduct. Furthermore, most approaches in social robotics
have an outcome-oriented focus and thus use questionnaires
to measure a global evaluation of the robot after interaction
took place. The present research takes a process-oriented
approach to explore the factors relevant in the formation of
users’ attitudes toward the robot. To do so, an ethnographic
approach (Conversation Analysis) was employed to analyze the
micro-coordination between user and robot. We report initial
findings from a study in which a robot took the role of a
fitness instructor. Our results emphasize that the participant
judges step-by-step the robot’s capabilities and differentiates
its competence on two levels regarding to the robot’s role: a
robot as a (1) social/interactional co-participant and as a (2)
fitness instructor
