The Impact of Robot Appearance Types and Robot Behavior Types on People's Perception of a Robot

Abstract

Robots appearance types and behavior types could be classified into two types: human-oriented and product-oriented. Human-oriented robot resembles humans appearance and behavior whereas product-oriented robot maximizes the robots dedicated functions. In this study, we compared human-oriented and product-oriented robots, and investigated the impact of two robot appearance types and two robot behavior types on perceived social presence, sociability, and service evaluation of a robot. We executed a 2 (robot appearance types: human-oriented vs. product-oriented) x 2 (robot behavior types: human-oriented vs. product-oriented) within-participants experiment design (N=24). Participants perceived more social presence and sociability to a robot with human-oriented appearance than that with product-oriented appearance whereas they were more satisfied with service provided by a robot with product-oriented appearance than that with human-oriented appearance. The same results were revealed for robot behavior types. Moreover, in the case of a robot with human-oriented behavior, people perceived product-oriented appearance as having more social presence and sociability than human-oriented appearance while in the case of a robot with product-oriented behavior, they evaluated human-oriented appearance more positively than product-oriented appearance. Implications for the design of human-robot interaction are discussed.