Balancing Human Likeness in Social Robots: Impact on Children's Trust and Interaction in a Storytelling Context

• While there is evidence that human-like characteristics in robots could benefit child-robot interaction in many ways, open questions remain about the appropriate degree of human likeness that should be implemented in robots to avoid adverse effects on acceptance and trust. This study investigates how human likeness, appearance and behavior, influence children's social and competency trust in a robot. We first designed two versions of the Furhat robot with visual and auditory human-like and machine-like cues validated in two online studies. Secondly, we created verbal behaviors where human likeness was manipulated as responsiveness regarding the robot's lexical alignment. Then, 52 children (7-10 years old) played a storytelling game in a between-subjects experimental design. Results show that the conditions did not affect subjective trust measures. However, objective measures showed that the level of human likeness affects trust differently. While low human-like appearance enhanced social trust, high human-like behavior improved competency trust. This work provides empirical evidence on manipulating facial features and behavior to control human likeness levels in a robot with a highly human-like morphology. We discuss the implications and importance of balancing human likeness in social robot design and its impacts on task performance, as it directly impacts trust-building with children.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Robotteknik och automation (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Robotics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

child-robot interaction

social robots

human likeness

trust

Människa-dator interaktion

Human-Computer Interaction

Datavetenskap med inriktning mot människa-datorinteraktion

Computer Science with specialization in Human-Computer Interaction

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)