Effects of visual appearance on the attribution of applications in social robotics

Author

Hegel, Frank ; Lohse, Manja ; Wrede, Britta

Author_Institution

Fac. of Technol., Bielefeld Univ., Bielefeld, Germany

fYear

2009

fDate

Sept. 27 2009-Oct. 2 2009

Firstpage

64

Lastpage

71

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of visual appearance of social robots on judgments about their potential applications. 183 participants rated the appropriateness of thirteen categories of applications for twelve social robots in an online study. The ratings were based on videos displaying the appearance of the robot combined with basic information about the robots´ general functions. The results confirmed the hypothesis that the visual appearance of robots is a significant predictor for the estimation of applications in the eye of the beholder. Furthermore, the ratings showed an attractiveness bias: robots being judged as more attractive by the users also received more positive evaluations (i.e., ldquolikingrdquo).

Keywords

human-robot interaction; robots; social aspects of automation; general functions; social robotics; visual appearance; Automata; Context; Human robot interaction; Informatics; Insects; Performance gain; Robotics and automation; Videos;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2009. RO-MAN 2009. The 18th IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Toyama

ISSN

1944-9445

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5081-7

Electronic_ISBN

1944-9445

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ROMAN.2009.5326340

Filename

5326340