Evaluating social & ubiquitous human-robot interaction

While many robotic initiatives now share the thesis that robots are a compelling instance of those artefacts which comprise and deliver smart and ubiquitous environments, reconciling the social interface aspect with pervasiveness and ubiquity still remains a largely unexplored area of research. We argue that specific studies must be carried out to explore possible inconsistencies between the keystones of social human-robot interaction and the new features exhibited by ubiquitous robots. To this end, we conducted a pilot study to explore how the ubiquity of a robot’s sensing capabilities affects the unconscious human perception of the robot as a social partner. Specifically, the experiment investigates whether people prefer a robot exhibiting ubiquitous sensor access or a more traditional robot whose capabilities are confined to its on-board sensors. We report qualitative results from the experiment and how results from the pilot study affect the design of the full-scale experiment.