Do We have to Say this is a “Telepresence Robot”? Exploration of Factors of Face and Speech Style Through Telecommunication via Robot

Communication technology has improved and become diverse in terms of content and form of functions, and telepresence robots are one type of such technology. These robots are used in an expanding variety of cases. One example of an expanding application is the ability to enable even individuals with disabilities to work and go outside using telepresence robots equipped with human and synthesized speech capabilities. Therefore, we wanted to explore a general case of telecommunication that uses synthesized speech. We carried out a web-based experiment and conducted a two-way ANOVA (robot face: human face, robot face; speech style: human speech, synthesized speech). We found that participants did not feel a human presence because most of the main effect was found for speech style, and they were not told that the robot was controlled remotely by a human. However, even when anthropomorphism was low, participants were willing to follow recommendations and to engage in trust.