Applying psychological and social strategies to increase engagement in human-robot interaction

Abstract

Social robotics faces the challenge of designing robots that are useful to society, can be used frequently, and that people trust. This problem can be addressed by developing robots with a high degree of bonding and engagement with their users. We propose to apply various strategies related to social psychology and game theory in the field of social robotics. The goal is to achieve bonding between the robot and its users, producing longer interaction times to increase the use of the robot on a daily basis. The combination of the different strategies focuses on developing social robots that facilitate and promote interaction with their users. As a novelty in this work, psychological strategies are incorporated in the field of social robotics. Specifically, to improve the utilization and engagement in our Mini social robot. Besides, we show the results obtained in the validation of the method in experiments performed by 21 elderly participants. These results demonstrate the usefulness of our system to increase the interaction time with the robot during entertainment sessions.