College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
Digital Convergence Laboratory of Chinese Cultural Inheritance and Global Communication, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2024 Jun 28;24(13):4215. doi: 10.3390/s24134215.
As a technical application in artificial intelligence, a social robot is one of the branches of robotic studies that emphasizes socially communicating and interacting with human beings. Although both robot and behavior research have realized the significance of social robot design for its market success and related emotional benefit to users, the specific design of the eye and mouth shape of a social robot in eliciting trustworthiness has received only limited attention. In order to address this research gap, our study conducted a 2 (eye shape) × 3 (mouth shape) full factorial between-subject experiment. A total of 211 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to the six scenarios in the study. After exposure to the stimuli, perceived trustworthiness and robot attitude were measured accordingly. The results showed that round eyes (vs. narrow eyes) and an upturned-shape mouth or neutral mouth (vs. downturned-shape mouth) for social robots could significantly improve people's trustworthiness and attitude towards social robots. The effect of eye and mouth shape on robot attitude are all mediated by the perceived trustworthiness. Trustworthy human facial features could be applied to the robot's face, eliciting a similar trustworthiness perception and attitude. In addition to empirical contributions to HRI, this finding could shed light on the design practice for a trustworthy-looking social robot.
作为人工智能的一种技术应用，社交机器人是机器人研究的一个分支，强调与人类进行社会交流和互动。尽管机器人和行为研究都已经意识到社交机器人设计对于其市场成功和相关情感利益对用户的重要性，但社交机器人的眼睛和嘴巴形状的具体设计在引起信任感方面只受到了有限的关注。为了解决这一研究差距，我们进行了一项 2（眼睛形状）×3（嘴巴形状）的完全被试间因子实验。共有 211 名参与者被招募并随机分配到研究中的六个场景中。在暴露于刺激后，相应地测量了感知信任度和机器人态度。结果表明，社交机器人的圆形眼睛（与窄眼睛相比）和上翘形状的嘴巴或中性嘴巴（与下撇形状的嘴巴相比）可以显著提高人们对社交机器人的信任感和态度。眼睛和嘴巴形状对机器人态度的影响都通过感知信任度来介导。值得信赖的人类面部特征可以应用于机器人的面部，从而产生类似的信任感和态度。除了对 HRI 的经验贡献外，这一发现还可以为设计具有可信赖外观的社交机器人提供实践指导。
