Influence of the Behavior of a Para-Operated Social Robot on the Impression Interlocutors Have of the Operator: an Online Study

Abstract

As research and applications of operated social robots continue to advance, a para-operated social robot has also been proposed, in which the robot and its operator exist in the same space, and the robot, operator, and interlocutor can interact face-to-face. Contributing to the promotion of human-human interaction by such robots, we considered that the operator could improve their interpersonal impression by making the robot say favorable utterances through operation during the dialog. This paper reports the results from the online video survey conducted to investigate the following hypothesis considering the robot-operator distance; Operator’s interpersonal impression is improved by making the robot say favorable utterances through operating. The results of the surveys conducted at different distances between the robot and the operator show that the impression of the operator was improved by the robot’s favorable humorous utterances when they are in close, but not when they are far apart. We consider that the findings contribute to the potential of dialog promotion by para-operated robots and suggest the importance of focusing on the positional relationship factor in the influence of robots on human-human relationships.