Preferences and perceptions of robot appearance and embodiment in human-robot interaction trials

Abstract

Abstract. Outcomes are presented from experiments on the effect of participants ' individual preferences for robot appearance and height on their preferences towards and perceptions of live robots. Participants who expressed a preference for a mechanical looking robot, tended to prefer all robot types to stay further away than those participants who expressed a preference for more humanoid robots. A majority group of two thirds (68.5%) preferred a robot which they personally perceived as having an extrovert and agreeable personality and a minority third (31.5%) preferred no strong robot personality factors. Humanoid robots also tended to be perceived as more intelligent than the mechanoid robots, but when combined with short height, were seen as less conscientious and more neurotic. The taller robots overall were also perceived as more human-like and conscientious than the short robots. Although many Human-Robot Interactions (HRIs) necessarily involve speech, our research emphasis is on the physical, spatial, visual and audible non-verbal social aspects of robots which must interact socially with humans. See Fong et al. [4] for an overview of robots designed to interact with humans in a social way. Peoples ' social perceptions of robots may be affected by a number of attributes exhibited by robots including aspects of both robot 1