Autonomous mobile robots can track a person’s location, provide contextually appropriate information and act in response to spoken commands. These robots are designed for social interaction and therefore it is important to address the human interaction with these robots including how the humans perceive the robot. DiSalvo’s paper discusses the human computer interaction research done to study which features and dimensions of a humanoid robot’s face most dramatically contribute to people’s perception of its humanness.

As part of the research, the group collected information and sorted the faces of the robots into three distinct groups. Research (Pearl), Consumer Products (ASIMO) and Fiction (Transformers). The research was to survey people in the sample size in order to determine a correlation with the features humans perceived as human like and vice versa. One key item is that the relationship of the body to the head and the importance of the body in the overall perception of the humanness is another important topic of inquiry.

There were three main considerations to take into account when evaluating a robot head. The first is the need to retain an amount of robot-ness so that the user does not develop false expectations of the robots emotional abilities but realizes its machine capabilities. The second is the need to project an amount of humanness so that the user will feel comfortable engaging the robot. Finally, the third need is to convey an amount of product-ness so that the user will feel comfortable using the robot.

This paper is very lightweight on the specifics of the humanness qualities of the robot head. I was expecting a more extensive research on the survey aspect of evaluating the criteria of robot heads and features. The human perception is very important in accepting a robot but the research into this area is covered lightly. There needs to be a more extensive HCI research done on this topic so that we can better understand why humans prefer certain features over the other features. This could even extend to the body of the robot and how a human would interact with the robot.

Reference:

  1. DiSalvo, Carl F. “All robots are not created equal: the design and perception of humanoid robot heads.” <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kiesler/publications/2002pdfs/2002DiSalvo.robots%20unequal.pdf>