Service Robot Feature and Interface Design Effects on User Emotional Responses

For service robots developed to assist nurses in routine patient services (e.g., medicine delivery), patient emotional experiences with the robot may be as important as robot task performance in terms of assessments of effectiveness and acceptance. The objective of this study was to understand the effect of different features of service robots on elderly people’s perceptions and emotional responses in a simulated medicine delivery task. Twenty four participants sat in a simulated patient room and a service robot entered and delivered a bag of “medicine” to them. Repeated trials were used to present variations on three robot features, including facial configuration, voice messaging and interactivity. Participant ratings of robot humanness (perceived anthropomorphism (PA)) were collected using a subjective rating scale along with emotional responses on arousal (excited – bored) and valence (happy – unhappy) using the self-assessment manikin (SAM) questionnaire after each trial. Results indicated the three types of robot features all promoted higher PA, arousal and valence, compared to a control condition (a robot configuration without any of the features). It was also found that the three types of features had different utility for stimulating participant emotional responses in terms of arousal and valence. In general, the results indicated that adding anthropomorphic features (face and voice) to service robots not only lead to higher perceptions of humanness, but also promote more positive emotional responses in elderly users. It is expected that results from this study could be used as a basis for developing affective robot interface design guidelines to promote user emotional experiences.