A Humanoid Robot Can Use Mimicry to Increase Likability and Motivation for Helping

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the replicability, generalizability, and efficacy of the optimal rate of mimicry in human-robot interactions reported by Y. Shinohara et al. (HAI'16, 2016). That study showed that a mimicry rate of about 83% was optimal to increase the likability of an upper-body humanoid Nao robot. To replicate the findings regarding the optimal rate of mimicry, and to examine these generalizability of the results, in study 1 we conducted experiments using the same method with two kinds of humanoid robots: a whole-body humanoid Nao robot and a whole-body humanoid Nao robot with randomly changing eye color between white to red. In study 2, we investigated whether increased likability triggered by mimicry also enhances helping behaviors from a human participant. Our study results confirmed the earlier findings from Shinohara et al. reinforcing the finding about the optimal rate of mimicry in human-robot interaction. Furthermore, we could demonstrated that mimicry can lead to helping behavior from the human participant which could have important implications for establishing cooperative interactions between humans and robots.