Exploratory Investigation into Influence of Negative Attitudes toward Robots on Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

Robots have been beginning to move from industrial fields such as factories, to offices, houses, and schools. Furthermore, a great deal of study has been performed recently on robots that feature functions for communicating with humans in daily life, (i.e., communication robots). This research has many applications such as entertainment, education, psychiatry, and so on On the other hand, some research has found that humans tend to have either extremely positive or extremely negative attitudes toward novel communication technologies If communication robots can be regarded as a novel communication technology, there is the possibility that humans will have negative attitudes or emotions toward these robots, regardless of whether they are pet-types or humanoid robots. Thus, it should be carefully investigated on how humans are mentally affected by them. Regarding the measurement of human mental images and impressions toward robots, there are plenty of published studies. Their results revealed that there were differences in subjective evaluations of the robot among genders and ages, and that nationality also affected the evaluation factors. Friedman et al. ( Furthermore, Kahn et al. (2004) examined preschool children's reasoning about and behavioural interactions with AIBO. Their important suggestion is that people in general, and children in particular, may fall prey to accepting robotic pets without the moral responsibilities that real, reciprocal companionship and cooperation involves. In addition,