🚷! That is Close Enough. How Body Postures

Influence Human-Robot

Proximity

Mohammad Obaid, Eduardo B. Sandoval, Jakub Złotowski, Elena Moltchanova, Christina A. Basedow, Christoph Bartneck

Communication in HHI

🗣 Language

😜😏😚

😒😖🤔 Facial Expressions

👠🎩👔👓💄 Appearance

👫 Gender

/➠0

/ ➠ 1 Proxemics

✋✋ Haptic

👀 Gaze

Non- verbal channels

Argyle and DeanEquilibrium model:

“If one of the components of intimacy is changed, one or more of the others will shift in the reverse direction in order to maintain equilibrium”

Posture

Hartnett et al. study

/➠1

/ ➠ 1 -Male and female subjects -> to approach a tall person and a short person -Two conditions: standing and sitting. -To stop when they felt “uncomfortable”.

Results-The height of the subject, their posture, and gender had a significant impact on the interpersonal distance -Subjects were perceived less threat in the sitting versus standing condition

Proxemics from HHI to HRI

Aim-Posture of the robot, posture of the human, -Participants’ gender, height, -Attitude towards robots, anthropomorphism tendency

👫⇒ ⇐ 👫

H1

personal comfort level based on: 🤖↔6

H1a

H1b

H2

The resulting distance is dependent on gender. 🤖↔1

H3

👥 with a higher tendency to anthropomorphize 🤖👽👹 will prefer a greater interaction

distance with the 🤖 than people with a low general tendency to anthropomorphize 🤖

👽👹 .

Hypotheses

Procedure

Negative Attitude Toward Robots Scale, (NARS) Robot Anxiety Scale (RAS) Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism (IDAQ)

Active

Passive

Height: M=1.75m

22 Participants (8 females)

NZ

Age M=28.6

Sitting Standing

Results -Robot Posture has a significant effect

-Previous experience matters

-High score in emotional sub-scale (NARS)-Women leave less space-Passive: standing human

leave longer distance (10.2cm)

35.1cm 50cm

Results

Consequent interactions made people more comfortable with robots

Age and Height are associate with shorter resulting distances

Results NARS

-Participants who have had previous experience with robots leave shorter distance

-People who scored higher on the emotional sub-scale of the NARS leave shorter distance

Contributions

🤖

-When the human is active and moving, they are in control of facets related to closeness and boundaries

-Distances were significantly impacted by the posture of the robot but not by the posture of the human.

-No support for H3 in terms of anthropomorphism

-Females allow less distance independently of the height

Robots with emotional qualities are allowed to be closer

1 1 1 💖 🤖🤖🤖 closer! Why?

Design Implications

Robots need to be designed to know if their user is sitting or standing, and allow for their social distance to be adopted accordingly

Looking for a PostDoc Position

for 2017

We catch up soon!