Iwasaki Masaya, Yamazaki Akiko, Yamazaki Keiichi, Miyazaki Yuji, Kawamura Tatsuyuki, Nakanishi Hideyuki
Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Osaka 560-8531, Japan.
School of Media Science, Tokyo University of Technology, Tokyo 192-0982, Japan.
Biomimetics (Basel). 2024 Jul 2;9(7):404. doi: 10.3390/biomimetics9070404.
Service robots that coexist with humans in everyday life have become more common, and they have provided customer service in physical shops around the world in recent years. However, their potential in effective sales strategies has not been fully realized due to their low social presence. This study aims to clarify what kind of robot behavior enhances the social presence of service robots and how it affects human-robot interaction and purchasing behavior. We conducted two experiments with a sales robot, Pepper, at a retail shop in Kyoto. In Experiment 1, we showed that the robot's social presence increased and that customers looked at the robot longer when the robot understood human gaze information and was capable of shared attention. In Experiment 2, we showed that the probability of customers picking up products increased when the robot suggested products based on the humans' degree of attention from gaze and posture information. These results indicate that the robot's ability to understand and make utterances about a customer's orientation and attention effectively enhances human-robot communication and purchasing motivation.
近年来，在日常生活中与人类共存的服务机器人变得越来越普遍，它们在世界各地的实体商店中提供客户服务。然而，由于其较低的社交存在感，它们在有效销售策略方面的潜力尚未得到充分发挥。本研究旨在阐明何种机器人行为能够增强服务机器人的社交存在感，以及它如何影响人机交互和购买行为。我们在京都的一家零售店使用销售机器人Pepper进行了两项实验。在实验1中，我们发现当机器人能够理解人类的注视信息并具备共同关注能力时，机器人的社交存在感会增强，顾客注视机器人的时间也会更长。在实验2中，我们发现当机器人根据人类从注视和姿势信息中表现出的关注程度推荐产品时，顾客拿起产品的概率会增加。这些结果表明，机器人理解并回应顾客的方向和注意力的能力能够有效增强人机沟通和购买动机。
