Sociality of robots

Abstract

With developments in robotics, robots "living" with people will become a part of daily life in the near future. However, there are many problems with social robots. In particular, the behavior of robots can influence human relations, and societies have not yet clarified this. In this paper, we report on an experiment we conducted to verify the influence of robot behavior on human relations using the "balance theory." The results show that robots can have both good and bad influence on human relations. One person's impression of another can undergo changes because of a robot. In other words, robots can construct or collapse human relations.