The Impact of the Robot Appearance Types on Social Interaction with a Robot and Service Evaluation of a Robot

Abstract

Background Robot’s appearance types could be classified into human-oriented and product-oriented. Human-oriented robot appearance resembles human’s appearance whereas product-oriented robot appearance maximizes the robot’s dedicated functions. In this study, we compared the two robot appearance types and investigated the impact of the two robot appearance types on perceived social presence, sociability, and service evaluation of a robot. Methods We excuted a 2 (robot appearance types: human-oriented vs. product-oriented) within-participants experiment design (N =24). Results Participants felt more social presence to a human-oriented robot than a product-oriented robot. Moreover, they perceived a human-oriented robot as more sociable than a product-oriented robot. On the other hand, participants were more satisfied with the service provided by a product-oriented robot than a human-oriented robot. Conclusions We investigated the effect of the robot appearance types on robot’s perceived social presence, sociability and service evaluation. Human-oriented robot appearance was effective on social interaction between a person and a robot while product-oriented robot appearance was effective on service satisfaction. Implications for design of robots in emotion-oriented situation and task-oriented situation are discussed.