Can object-exclusion behavior of robot encourage human to tidy up tabletop?

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the influence of a robot's behavior on participants' tidying up motivation. The complexity of the natural environment and the diversity of objects cause the difficulty for the creation of an automated system that tidies up a home or office. We are developing a robotic system that assists in tidying up a table through cooperation with a human. In our system, the robot encourages people to tidy up the disordered objects. The system targets such users who are not actively trying to tidy up. Completing this system requires an investigation of robot behaviors that effectively encourage a human to tidy up. We designed the robot's behavior as an object-exclusion behavior from a table. To validate the behavior, we conducted an experiment with 13 male and 5 female participants aged 20-23. We observed a statistically significant difference between the cases in which the robot acted using the behavior and those in which it did not. The results showed that the robot's exclusion behavior motivated the participants to tidy up. In addition, another result indicated that the robot's behavior of dropping disordered object actually prompted humans to tidy up.