Living with Robots: Investigating the Habituation Effect in Participants´ Preferences During a Longitudinal Human-Robot Interaction Study

This paper presents and discusses a longitudinal study which investigated habituation effects between humans and robots over a period of five weeks. Participants´ preferences for the robot´s approach distance with respect to its approach direction and appearance were investigated in a variety of domestic scenarios. These human-robot interaction (HRI) scenarios were also designed to explore the notions of autonomy and control. The results of this study show that participants´ preferences change over time as the participants habituate to the robot. This trend was significant in terms of the robot´s appearance and approach direction. Also, it seems to indicate that participants who are accustomed to the robot prefer to be more ´in control´ of the situation - in that they appreciated reduced robot autonomy in case of unexpected events.