Puppies or Flies: The Training Interaction Changes the Animacy Perception of Drones

Abstract

This study proposes a pet robot as a new utilization of drone. A general pet robot has a cute appearance. The drone used in this study improves animacy, feeling of attachment and feeling of affinity only by interaction with participants, without relying on its appearance. In the experiment, we compared these sense in case of with a training and without a training. As a result, the training condition improved the robot's animacy, feeling of attachment and feeling of intimacy. In addition, participants felt the drone as mammals and birds in the training condition, and participants felt the drone as insects in the nontraining condition. Therefore, it was suggested the difference of animacy to the drone between two conditions. Furthermore, when participants damaged the drone, we found that participants felt sorry for the drone in training condition.