Sharing spaces with robots in a home scenario - anthropomorphic attributions and their effect on proxemic expectations and evaluations in a live HRI trial

Abstract

This paper presents results from an HRI study that involved participants interacting with robots of different appearances. The particular focus of this paper is how anthropomorphic attributions impacted the proxemic expectations of the robots’ behaviour as well as the postexperimental evaluations of the robot. The results suggest that a higher degree of anthropomorphic attribution is linked to higher expectations of adherence to human proxemic norms. The post-experimental evaluation of the robots’ violations of these expectations suggests an effect in which the reward-value of interacting with a robot which is considered more anthropomorphic counteracts the impact of the deviation from social expectation.