A Robot That Communicates With Vocal Fillers Has … Uhhh … Greater Social Presence

Abstract

Social robots are communicative partners that need interpersonal communication skills. Vocal fillers have been shown to act as cues during interpersonal communication. The purpose of this experiment was to test people’s perceptions of their social presence with social robots utilizing vocal fillers. Participants reported an increase in their perceptions of social presence during the condition in which the social robot spoke with vocal fillers.