The influence of robot anthropomorphism on the feelings of embarrassment when interacting with robots

✍ Scribed by Christoph Bartneck; Timo Bleeker; Jeroen Bun; Pepijn Fens; Lynyrd Riet

• Book ID: 111493218
• Publisher: SP Versita
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 328 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 2080-9778
• DOI: 10.2478/s13230-010-0011-3

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Medical robots are expected to help with providing care in an aging society. The degree to which patients experience embarrassment in a medical examination might be influenced by the robots’ level of anthropomorphism. The results of our preliminary study show that young, healthy, Dutch university students were less embarrassed when interacting with a technical box than with a robot. Highly human-like robots might therefore not be the best choice for a medical robot. This result also shows that the robot was perceived as a person more so than the technical box. The next step is to compare the robot to a real nurse or doctor. If patients are less embarrassed when interacting with a robot, then, potentially, patients will be less likely to defer important medical examinations when carried out by medical robots.