Telepresence robots are robots used as an intermediary for social communication (Herring, 2016). Telepresence robots are increasing in use in conferences (Neustaedter, Venolia, Procyk, & Hawkins, 2014), hospitals (Sucher et al., 2011), and workplaces (Lee & Takayama, 2011). These interactions are social, yet new, and should be studied to understand which social decisions are and are not socially acceptable. Among the important factors of social interactions are dialogue timing and approach paths.

 

In this study, we sought to reveal how approach paths and dialogue timing can affect the perceived personality of a robot operator. We experimentally manipulated approach paths (front, back) and dialogue timing (early, late) to assess their effects on participant feelings of comfort and awkwardness. We expect to find that (H1) participants in general feel more comfortable when approached from the front, (H2) approaches from the back with late dialogue timing will be less comfortable, and (H3) participants are in general will experience more awkwardness when dialogue timing is later.
 

A total of 28 undergraduate students attending the University of California Santa Cruz participated in this experiment for course credit. Participants with prior experience with a Beam robot were excluded from the sample.

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This experiment was conducted in an office room at a university campus. The participant sat between the robot and the door to prevent feelings of entrapment. During the target interaction, the participant is sitting at a table, completing a task on a laptop, and approached from 14 feet away by the remote experimenter via a Beam+ robot. This setting was employed for all four conditions. The independent variables in this study included approach path approaches (front and back) and dialogue onset timing (early and late). 

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Figure 1. Conditions: Front and back approach, early and late dialogue timing

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Procedure 

Introductions: At the start of the experiment, the local experimenter introduced herself to the participant. To reduce the novelty effect and acquaint the participant with the remote experimenter, the local experimenter introduced the participant to the robot operator as a robot. Then, the remote experimenter docked on the other side of the room and logged out of the Beam robot. 

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Distraction task: The participants were asked to find grammatical errors in a document. The participant was informed that the document they were reviewing was written by the remote operator and that the participant will help the operator identify grammatical errors. This provides a meaningful reason for the remote experimenter to address the participant. This task was designed to mimic a common scenario in which the participant is not fully expecting a Beam robot to approach them.

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Interaction: Upon logging into the beam, the remote experimenter begins moving forward immediately. Depending on the present condition, the remote experimenter will begin talking immediately upon logging in or will begin the script after moving the Beam robot onto a marked spot, one foot from the participant. The remote experimenter followed a script in interacting with the participant. The content of the conversation revolved around the participant’s grammatical decisions. This conversation lasted about two minutes. The conversation was designed to be short to prevent any additional variables from influencing the results. 

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Survey: A Ten-Item Personality Inventory (Eyseneck, 1950) survey was administered to the participants about how they perceive the remote experimenter’s personality and how they perceive their own personality. Previous research suggests that personality traits influence how people interact. For example, a person scoring high on “agreeableness” will tend to have a smaller zone of personal space (Takayama & Pantofaru, 2009). Other studies have revealed associations between personality traits and approach distances (Walters et al., 2005).

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Interview: After taking the survey, participants were asked how they felt about the remote experimenter and the interaction, how they would rate the comfort and awkwardness experienced during the interaction on a likert scale, what they would have done differently, and whether they own any pets. These questions were asked to understand the participant’s experience more broadly to inform future studies. Takayama & Pantofaru (2009) suggests that pet ownership is associated with decreased personal space with robots and the present study sought to emulate that finding with approach paths. 

 

Results

Participants were asked to complete a ten-item personality questionnaire regarding how they perceive their own personality and the personality of the remote experimenter they interacted with. They were asked to assign scores from 1 to 7 for each personality adjective. For these criteria, no other associated descriptors were assigned besides the words themselves.

 

Although no statistical analyses have been conducted yet, the average ratings of the following personality characteristics will be discussed: “Dependable, self-disciplined”, “Disorganized, careless”,  “Anxious, easily upset”, “Conventional, uncreative”. 

 

 

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These results indicate that dialogue timing may have an effect on how participants view the personality of the remote operator. However, no formal statistical analyses have been conducted on these data and no conclusions should be made at this stage.

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Participants were asked to rate the awkwardness or comfort they felt during their interaction with the remote experimenter. 

 

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These results indicate that dialogue timing may not have an effect on how participants view an interaction with a remote operator. However, no formal statistical analyses have been conducted on these data and no conclusions should be made at this stage.

 

Discussion

In this study, we explored how to approach and when to start a dialogue as a remote robot operator. And, we explored how these social decisions affect the perceptions conceived by humans near a robot. Because robot-mediated communication often contains constraints on the robot operator, results in this study provide insight into how basic social behaviors may have an impact in social relationships. These basic social behaviors often go unnoticed in social interaction perhaps because interaction is so natural between humans.

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Although human-robot interaction occurs in rooms of varying loudness, the room of the present study was exceptionally quiet. It may be necessary to come up really close to someone for them to hear you in other environments. Additionally, initiating dialogue may be uncommon at 14 feet or 1 foot away from an interlocutor. So, the dialogue held in this study may have been conducted under unusual circumstances, making it difficult to extract meaning about participant perceptions beyond the scope of the present experiment setting. 

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