HugBot: Designing a Persuasive Robot for Smartphone Addiction Control

Abstract

The convenience of mobile applications and social networking services in our daily lives has caused an increase in addiction to mobile devices, posing many adverse effects. While there are many products on the market that combat this addiction using coercion, there have been few designed using the conscious abilities of persuasion. In this paper, we develop a persuasive robot, 'HugBot,' to help control smartphone overuse. HugBot responds accordingly in verbal and non-verbal cues to the user's actions, discouraging cellphone use. Furthermore, we hope to discover new paradigms for using stuffed-toy-based persuasive robot systems in user-centric addiction control.