“Olá, my name is Ana”: A study on Brazilians interacting with a receptionist robot

Abstract

In the near future, robots are expected to perform assistive tasks and do different kind of jobs. In particular, humanoid robots are possible candidates for being used as helpers in activities of daily living. One possible employment is working as a receptionist, providing useful indications to visitors in a public office. The design of how robots could look like is a matter of growing importance, as it is important to create a look that poses no uncanny valley effects on the human user and that is appropriate to potentially serve in different job areas in human society. In this paper we want to describe the study on anthropomorphism of a receptionist robot. We invited Brazilian people with different education levels to interact with two variations of a receptionist robot, different in physical appearance as well as in the sound of the voice. In one case, the appearance was a conversational agent made with computer graphics, in the other, a real humanoid robot. Results gathered from surveys and comments of the participants provide useful directions to design a receptionist robot and insights on the effect of digital divide on anthropomorphism.