“Imagine a robot.” What comes to your mind? Going by popular media tropes, you presumably think of a humanoid or a remarkably human-like robot that can interact with humans. In popular media, this is the typical portrayal of robots where they start as mechanical interactors and slowly gain enough sentience to think/feel on their own.
While in reality, such robots are still a thing of the future. However, such portrayals impact how the public perceives robots and what they expect/fear these robots can do. Today, robots have increasingly begun to appear in private and public spaces. They are not simply confined to the industrial world anymore.
The field of Robotics is an ever-expanding and ever-diversifying one. And although not yet common—compared to countries like Japan—robot usage is slated to go up in different sectors. The growth of artificial intelligence will only accelerate this phenomenon. Robots can not only ease workload but also provide greater efficiency with fewer errors. An increasing amount of effort is going into understanding the dynamics of human-robot interaction (HRI) as robots have begun to make appearances in our homes and social circles. However, the design and development of robots should be contingent on how the public perceives the robots. Public perception of robots can provide significant knowledge, understanding, and direction to guide the development of robots that can integrate seamlessly into society. How people perceive robots is a crucial part of the study of both human-robot interactions and social robotics.
However, the interaction success of such robots will depend on how comfortable the humans they are meant to interact with are regarding these interactions. The acceptance, in turn, depends upon the beliefs and perceptions of humans about such robots. According to Bartneck and Forlizzi (2004, p. 592), a social robot can be defined as “an autonomous or semi-autonomous robot that interacts and communicates with humans by following the behavioral norms expected by the people with whom the robot is intended to interact.”
Even with the rapidly growing ubiquity, it is essential for us to note that the constantly growing robot presence alone does not equate to complete acceptance by humans. Bartneck et al. (2005) found that the mere presence of robots around people does not equate to complete acceptance or willingness to interact with them. People judge robots based on many different factors, including the robots’ characteristics and the users themselves. How these human users perceive robots can, of course, not be explained in a linear fashion. Some different domains and factors warrant empirical scrutiny to understand the basis of such judgments and perceptions.
Attitudes and Expectations
Public perception of robots is a vital aspect of the entire field of social robotics. There is an increased understanding that user perceptions, attitudes, and expectations of the robots will impact acceptability. According to Takayama (2008), public opinion is a crucial factor that “shapes technology adoption.” It is also much easier to use if the public’s expectations are catered to.
Even within the realm of attitudes and expectations, there are factors that have an influence. Ezer, in 2008, found that there are age-related discrepancies in the expectations of home-based robots. Over the span of two studies, Ezer investigated how participants imagined a robot in their home and found that younger adults were more likely to ascribe a more human-like appearance to their imagined robots and were more comfortable with leaving the robots alone at home. Both populations expected the robots to perform repetitive, mundane, and specific tasks compared to being always active around the home. However, both young and older adults were willing to be open about other tasks for the robot as long as it was convenient for them and required less effort in monitoring.
Research has also attributed culture to the differences in attitudes toward robots. In a cross-cultural study with Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese participants, it was found that nationality had a significant effect on the social dimension of the Negative Attitude towards Robots Scale (NARS; Bartneck et al., 2005). Surprisingly, Japan—the country known for its high exposure to robots—seemed to be most concerned about the social effect of robots in society. An additional finding from their study was that gender did not affect the attitude toward robots. In a more recent study, Haring et al. (2014) found some cultural differences between the assumptions with the term robot, the exposure to robots, and fears concerning robots. Japanese participants had greater exposure to robots via media, but European participants had more personal contact with robots. Both participant groups had similar positive attitudes and assumptions, and fears regarding robots. Japan, however, did tend to favor more human-likeness in robots. With hardly any study of this sort from India, we should not just guess but conduct empirical work to understand how Indian perceive and judge robots – which is potentially a big market that will open up. There are already robots within agriculture and more recently, in healthcare – poised to do robotic surgery in top-class hospitals. It is a matter of time before we will see more robots in education, social interaction, customer engagement, entertainment, and other areas.
Public Acceptance
The public’s acceptance of robots or the acceptability of a particular robot is essential in determining its success. Apart from being used in industrial and manufacturing settings, robots have been introduced in many different sectors like healthcare, education, elder care, and the military. Quite recently, robots have made an entrance into social as well as domestic settings. Robots are now expected to aid with multiple chores at home. However, it is still a long way before the widespread acceptance of robots in the domestic sphere. Young et al. (2009) argue that the primary reason behind such hesitation is the complex process of socialization associated with robots. Such socialization depends upon the subjective perceptions of the public. Considering multiple models for robot acceptance, Young and colleagues have filtered out a few factors that are key to the formation of these perceptions of the public—safety, accessibility and usability, practical benefits, fun, social pressures, status gains, and social intelligence. Decision lab is conducting a study that will be one of the first to find what people in India think and judge different commercial robots in the market.
What next?
A behavioral investigation is needed against the backdrop of the push for robotics and cCobotics in India. A number of startups and Technology Innovations, including the technology Innovation Hub at IIT Delhi on Cobotics, the Human Computer Interaction hub at IIT Mandi, the long-existing interest in Robotics in almost all IITs and other engineering institutions along with the rejuvenated space for new entrepreneurial adventures in robotics need to get stronger by imbibing insights from behavioral science. This time is exciting with the opening up of spaces like the Science City in Gujarat which hosts robots from far and near. A crucial gap is that there is no sustained programme or event project that specifically focuses on human-robot interaction from a psychological or cognitive perspective. How humans think about robots, judge them, work with them, and trust them has become even more crucial. Additionally, we shall see more human-in-the-loop robotics that makes collaborative robotics will flourish. In multiple such setups, especially in healthcare, a prime question should be what is the human view of robotics? How can we do better in India for people?
References
Bartneck, C., & Forlizzi, J. (2004, September). A design-centred framework for social human-robot interaction. In RO-MAN 2004. 13th IEEE international workshop on robot and human interactive communication (IEEE Catalog No. 04TH8759) (pp. 591-594). IEEE.
Bartneck, C., Nomura, T., Kanda, T., Suzuki, T., & Kennsuke, K. (2005). A cross-cultural study on attitudes towards robots.
Ezer, N. (2008). Is a robot an appliance, teammate, or friend? Age-related differences in expectations of and attitudes towards personal home-based robots. Georgia Institute of Technology.
Haring, K. S., Mougenot, C., Ono, F., & Watanabe, K. (2014). Cultural Differences in Perception and Attitude towards Robots. International Journal of AffectiveEngineering, 13(3), 149–157. https://doi.org/10.5057/ijae.13.149
Takayama, L., Ju, W., & Nass, C. (2008, March). Beyond dirty, dangerous and dull: what everyday people think robots should do. In 2008 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction (HRI) (pp. 25-32). IEEE.
Young, J. E., Hawkins, R., Sharlin, E., & Igarashi, T. (2009). Toward Acceptable Domestic Robots: Applying Insights from Social Psychology. International Journal of Social Robotics, 1(1), 95–108.
Edited by Sumitava Mukherjee
