Home // ACHI 2016, The Ninth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions // View article

User Acceptance of Social Robots

Authors:
Ibrahim A. Hameed
Zheng-Hua Tan
Nicolai B. Thomsen
Xiaodong Duan

Keywords: human robot interaction (HRI); personal robots; iSocioBot;

Abstract:
A mismatch between the user’s expectations and the actual reality of social robots may negatively impact the acceptance and use of the robot. Given that the use of personal robots may be expected to become a part of people’s everyday lives, it is critical to understand and consider the factors that may increase acceptance and adoption when robots are designed and introduced. How the robot is accepted by end users may be influenced by factors, such as: 1) the role assigned to the robot (i.e., robot function), 2) the robot’s social capabilities or skills such as the robot’s social intelligence and emotions expressions, and 3) the robot appearance. In this paper, an experiment is conducted to investigate, understand and identify the potential impact of these factors on user’s acceptance and adoption of social robots. The experiment is conducted in a culture night event where some of the attendances are voluntarily interacted with the robot and filled out a questionnaire. The questionnaire is designed to measure their expectations and impressions before and after interacting with the robot (i.e., to assess robot’s social skills), their preferences regarding the robot appearance (i.e., machine-likeness or human-likeness appearance) and finally to assess the need for a secondary interactive touchscreen display on the robot chest to facilitate interface and hence improve the robot’s functionality. The goal of this paper is to understand the impact of these factors on user’s acceptance and adoption and giving the users a more effective role in the design of this type of technology.

Pages: 274 to 279

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2016

Publication date: April 24, 2016

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4138

ISBN: 978-1-61208-468-8

Location: Venice, Italy

Dates: from April 24, 2016 to April 28, 2016