Study of the Importance of Adequacy to Robot Verbal and Non Verbal Communication in Human-Robot interaction

TL;DR

This study investigates how the balance of verbal and nonverbal communication affects human acceptance of robots in homecare settings, emphasizing the importance of communication adequacy.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the role of verbal and nonverbal cues in human-robot interaction acceptance, guiding robot communication design.

Findings

Nonverbal behavior enhances human acceptance of robots.

Proper alignment of verbal and nonverbal cues improves interaction quality.

Acceptance depends on communication adequacy rather than appearance.

Abstract

The Robadom project aims at creating a homecare robot that help and assist people in their daily life, either in doing task for the human or in managing day organization. A robot could have this kind of role only if it is accepted by humans. Before thinking about the robot appearance, we decided to evaluate the importance of the relation between verbal and nonverbal communication during a human-robot interaction in order to determine the situation where the robot is accepted. We realized two experiments in order to study this acceptance. The first experiment studied the importance of having robot nonverbal behavior in relation of its verbal behavior. The second experiment studied the capability of a robot to provide a correct human-robot interaction.