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Article published In: Interaction Studies
Vol. 22:2 (2021) ► pp.141–176

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Impact of nonverbal robot behaviour on human teachers’ perceptions of a learner robot

 | University of Waterloo
 | University of Waterloo
 | University of Waterloo
 | University of Waterloo
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 28 February 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/is.20036.ali
Abstract
How do we perceive robots practising a task that we have taught them? While learning, human trainees usually provide nonverbal cues that reveal their level of understanding and interest in the task. Similarly, nonverbal social cues of trainee robots that can be interpreted naturally by humans can enhance robot learning. In this article, we investigated a scenario in which a robot is practising a physical task in front of the human teachers (i.e., participants), who were asked to assume that they had previously taught the robot to perform that task. Through an online experiment with 167 participants, we examined the effects of different gaze patterns and arm movements with multiple speeds and various kinds of pauses on human teachers’ perception of different attributes of the robot. We found that the perception of a trainee robot’s attributes (e.g., confidence and eagerness to learn) can be systematically affected by its behaviours. Findings of this study can inform designing more successful nonverbal social interactions for intelligent robots.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Related work
    • 2.1Nonverbal behaviour for robots
    • 2.2Impact of robots’ behavioural parameters
  • 3.Research question and hypotheses
  • 4.Experiment
    • 4.1Overall design
    • 4.2Technical implementation
    • 4.3Procedure
    • 4.4Participants
    • 4.5Statistical analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Perceived confidence of the robot
    • 5.2Perceived calmness of the robot
    • 5.3Robot’s perceived liking the task
    • 5.4Perceived robot’s attention to the task
    • 5.5Perceived proficiency of the robot
    • 5.6Robot’s perceived eagerness to learn
    • 5.7Robot perceived as goal-driven
    • 5.8Perceived robot’s attention to the teacher
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Shaping human teachers’ perceptions
    • 6.2Interaction design implications
  • 7.Limitations and future work
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (67)
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Aliasghari, Pourya, Moojan Ghafurian, Chrystopher L. Nehaniv & Kerstin Dautenhahn
2022. Kinesthetic Teaching of a Robot over Multiple Sessions: Impacts on Speed and Success. In Social Robotics [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 13818], ► pp. 160 ff. DOI logo
Aliasghari, Pourya, Moojan Ghafurian, Chrystopher L. Nehaniv & Kerstin Dautenhahn
2023. How Do We Perceive Our Trainee Robots? Exploring the Impact of Robot Errors and Appearance When Performing Domestic Physical Tasks on Teachers’ Trust and Evaluations. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction 12:3 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Aliasghari, Pourya, Moojan Ghafurian, Chrystopher L. Nehaniv & Kerstin Dautenhahn
2024. How Non-experts Kinesthetically Teach a Robot over Multiple Sessions: Diversity in Teaching Styles and Effects on Performance. International Journal of Social Robotics 16:11-12 ► pp. 2079 ff. DOI logo

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