Soliloquising Social Robot in a Hotel Room

Abstract

This study examines the possible services a social robot can provide in a hotel room. This area of research falls under the relatively unexplored domain of social robot services. This paper proposes and tests the proactive services rendered by a soliloquising social robot that has three core functions: responding to a customer's request, soliloquising about the hotel service, and proactively expressing goodwill (e.g. greetings and farewells), according to the context. We expect that, through its proactive interaction (in this case, soliloquising and expressing goodwill), a soliloquising social robot can become an essential room companion for customers. Rather than being a mere tool, the soliloquising robot can relieve a customer's feeling of loneliness and provide him or her some interpersonal warmth. However, the proactive social robot may appear to be intrusive. Thus, a field experiment was conducted at a hotel on the expectations and risks associated with using such a robot. The results reveal that although social robots can make potential room companions in hotels, it is necessary to resolve a few issues to enable them gain wider acceptance.