Will you follow the robot's advice?

Abstract

Robots could be classified into an autonomous robot and a tele-operated robot according to the levels of autonomy. As a match between robot types and task types is important, we explored the impact of robot types and task types on social presence, trustworthiness, and willingness to follow the robot's advice in art appraising situation. We executed a 2(robot types: autonomous robot vs. tele-operated robot) X 2(task types: quantitative task vs. qualitative task) mixed-participants experiment (N=30). Participants perceived more social presence toward the tele-operated robot than the autonomous robot while the autonomous robot was perceived more trustworthy than the tele-operated robot. The robot types and the task types had an interaction effect on the perceived trustworthiness and the willingness to follow the advice. Implications for the appropriate design by the robot types and the task types regarding human-robot interaction are discussed.