The Effect of Exaggerated Nonverbal Cues on the Perception of the Robot Pepper

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of selected exaggerated nonverbal cues on the perception of the Pepper robot in a story-telling scenario. We conduct a video-based user study based on an online survey containing the Godspeed questionnaire and additional interviews. The results of the study indicate that using exaggeration as a method to design nonverbal cues can improve the perception of the robot in both robot-talking and robot-listening cases. We find that Pepper is perceived as animate and safe in both cases, and additionally as anthropomorphic for the case when the robot is talking.