Rapport-Expectation with a Robot Scale

— An online survey for 600 Japanese participants from 20’s to 50’s was conducted to reveal who expect rapport to what robots. In concrete, the survey was based on hypothetical situation method consisting of three situations: a robot servicing in a public space, a business-partner robot in a company, and a butler robot servicing a family in a home. We measured people’s expectation of rapport to these robots using a psychological scale, RERS [6, 7], and we also measured their personal traits using other scales. As expected, the result revealed that 1) the butler robot was expected as a conversation partner to be with together, more strongly than the other two robots. Further, we found that 2) rapport-expectation with the butler robot was inhibited by negative attitudes toward robots, more strongly than the other robots; 3) people with more empathy to others tended to have higher expectation to have rapport with robots.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: IJSR
• Authors: Tatsuya Nomura, Takayuki Kanda
• Keywords: IJSR 2016