ELTE ethologists’ service robot sparks curiosity rather than fear
Do people behave differently around a robot than around a person performing the same task in everyday situations outside the laboratory? ELTE ethologists are about to find it out in a new study.
Eötvös Loránd University
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When a robot offers you candy, it is hard not to be curious. In an experiment conducted by ethologists at ELTE, visitors at public events noticed an autonomous service robot more often than a human server, and the candy on the robot’s tray disappeared faster. The study also suggests that the presence of robots may influence the way people behave in social situations.
view moreCredit: Photo: Márta Gácsi / ELTE Eötvös Loránd University
When a robot offers you candy, it is hard not to be curious. In an experiment conducted by ethologists at ELTE, visitors at public events noticed an autonomous service robot more often than a human server, and the candy on the robot’s tray disappeared faster. The study also suggests that the presence of robots may influence the way people behave in social situations.
Imagine walking through a crowded event when a robot with free candies on its tray rolls up beside you. Would you stop? Would you smile? Or would you rather step out of its way? According to a new study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior Reports, most people seem to behave more curiously than cautiously around certain social robots.
Researchers at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) and HUN-REN–ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group investigated how visitors reacted to an autonomous service robot, Biscee, and a human, both offering candies at real-life events. The goal was simple: to find out whether people behave differently around a robot than around a person performing the same task in everyday situations outside the laboratory.
The experiment took place at public events, where the mobile non-humanoid robot, developed by the research group, moved fully autonomously through the crowd while carrying candies. At the same time, a human server (a young woman) performed the same task in the same environment, allowing the researchers to make a direct comparison.
The robot turned heads. “Visitors were more likely to observe the robot than the human server. Yet despite attracting extra attention, the robot did not make people more likely to move away or avoid it. In other words, people noticed the robot, but based on their behaviour, they seemed to be just as comfortable sharing space with it as they were with another person,” explains Melitta Csepregi, first author of the study.
Biscee remained just as interesting when it wasn't offering any candies and simply walked around with an empty tray. People looked at it, pointed at it, waved to it and touched it just as often, suggesting that the robot itself—not the sweets—was the main attraction.
The robot proved remarkably effective at its job. Its tray was emptied faster than the human server’s in every trial. Interestingly, this was not strictly due to more people stopping by. Instead, visitors often grabbed two or more candies from the robot at once—something they never did when taking candy from the human server. The researchers suggest that people may have felt less pressure to follow social norms, such as politely taking "just one," when interacting with a robot. Nonetheless, the results show that even relatively simple social robots can successfully perform routine service tasks in busy public spaces.
The researchers did not just observe people's behaviour—they also asked visitors how they felt. Here, an interesting difference emerged. Although people stepped away from Biscee just as rarely as they did from the human server, some visitors said they felt slightly uncomfortable when the robot came very close, perceiving it as somewhat pushy or intrusive.
“This discrepancy highlights the importance of combining different methods to assess the intended users’ attitudes towards a social robot in more depth during the early development of the agent. This step is often missing, creating a disparity between users’ preferences and the marketed robotic agent,” adds Márta Gácsi, senior researcher of the project.
The study offers a glimpse into a future in which robots and humans work and live side by side. Although the transition to this future is often portrayed as—and thus, widely believed to be—a seamless process, this assumption is often far from reality. Achieving truly successful and trouble-free human–robot coexistence will require rigorous research to aid the development of our future robotic helpers.
Journal
Computers in Human Behavior Reports
Article Title
Taking candy from a robot: Attitudes toward an autonomous non-humanoid service robot at real-life events
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