Conversations with Andrea: Visitors' Opinions on Android Robots in a Museum
Marcel Heisler, Christian Becker-Asano

TL;DR
This study evaluates visitors' opinions on an autonomous android robot in a museum, revealing preferences for information roles and desired improvements based on real-world interactions.
Contribution
It provides empirical insights into visitor perceptions and preferences for android robots in a museum setting, informing future robot design and deployment.
Findings
Most visitors want the robot to provide exhibit information.
Changing the robot's gender cues had little impact on perception.
Visitors requested multilingual support and faster responses.
Abstract
The android robot Andrea was set up at a public museum in Germany for six consecutive days to have conversations with visitors, fully autonomously. No specific context was given, so visitors could state their opinions regarding possible use-cases in structured interviews, without any bias. Additionally the 44 interviewees were asked for their general opinions of the robot, their reasons (not) to interact with it and necessary improvements for future use. The android's voice and wig were changed between different days of operation to give varying cues regarding its gender. This did not have a significant impact on the positive overall perception of the robot. Most visitors want the robot to provide information about exhibits in the future, while opinions on other roles, like a receptionist, were both wanted and explicitly not wanted by different visitors. Speaking more languages (than…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsSocial Robot Interaction and HRI · Artificial Intelligence in Games · Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
