Embodiment and Human-Robot Interaction: A Task-Based Perspective

— In this work, we further test the hypothesis that physical embodiment has a measurable effect on performance and impression of social interactions. Support for this hypothesis would suggest fundamental differences between virtual agents and robots from a social standpoint and would have significant implications for human-robot interaction. We have refined our task-based metrics to give a measurement, not only of the participant’s immediate impressions of a coach for a task, but also of the participant’s performance in a given task. We measure task performance and participants’ impression of a robot’s social abilities in a structured task based on the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. Our experiment compares aspects of embodiment by evaluating: (1) the difference between a physical robot and a simulated one; and (2) the effect of physical presence through a co-located robot versus a remote, tele-present robot. With a participant pool (n=21) of roboticists and nonroboticists, we were...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: roman
• Authors: Joshua Wainer, David Feil-Seifer, Dylan A. Shell, Maja J. Mataric
• Keywords: Embodied Robot, Robot, Robotics, Robot’s Social Abilities, ROMAN 2007