Exploring Behaviours for Social Robots

The paper details a set of experiments to assess the perception of basic behaviors for social robots. These include (i) the blinking of the eyes, (ii) the shape of the mouth, (iii) the way the whole body moves, (iv) the motion of the arms, and (v) a collection of non-verbal sounds. The goals are (i) to validate behaviors that can be useful for social robots with simple anthropomorphic features, and (ii) to explore the perception of the audiences selected to interact with the robot, namely how long do they last and the perceived emotions, i.e., the extent to which small behaviours are perceived by people observing the robot. Online questionnaires containing media displaying a Monarch MBot robot undertaking several actions are used to assess people’s perception. Inequality indicators (Gini Index, pq-means, and Hoyes Index) are used as analysis indicators, in addition to classical statistical tests.