If you tickle a robot, it may not
laugh, but you may still consider it humanlike -- depending on its role in your
life, reports an international group of researchers. Designers and engineers
assign robots specific roles, such as servant, caregiver, assistant or
playmate. Researchers found that people expressed more positive feelings toward
a robot that would take care of them than toward a robot that needed care. To
determine how human perception of a robot changed based on its role,
researchers observed 60 interactions between college students and Nao, a social
robot developed by Aldebaran Robotics, a French company specializing in
humanoid robots.
Each interaction could go one of
two ways. The human could help Nao calibrate its eyes, or Nao could examine the
human's eyes like a concerned eye doctor and make suggestions to improve
vision. Participants then filled out a questionnaire about their feelings
toward Nao. Researchers used these answers to calculate the robot's perceived
benefit and social presence in both scenarios. The research team found that
when participants perceived a strong social presence, they considered the
caregiving robot smarter than the robot in the alternate scenario. Participants
were also more likely to attribute human qualities to the caregiving robot.
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