Robot vs. voice assistant: Is playing with pepper more fun than playing with alexa?

Abstract

Entertainment applications for robots are often based on voice interaction. In these scenarios, the robot is primarily used as a voice assistant with a physical body. We conducted a study to investigate whether the entertainment value of a robot during a game can be attributed to the experience of voice interaction alone, or whether it is related to the physical presence of a robot and its expressivity through gestures and movement. The study examined the user experience for three different set-ups of a quiz game (with voice assistant, robot without animation, and animated robot). The results indicate that the perceived hedonic quality increases with physical presence and movement of the robot. Pragmatic quality was not rated differently for the three game versions. Additional qualitative interviews suggest that it might be desirable to design not overly expressive, but meaningful robot behavior for entertainment applications, in order to promote both, hedonic and pragmatic experience.