Advocating Attitudinal Change through Android Robot's Intention-Based Expressive Behaviors: Toward WHO COVID-19 Guidelines Adherence

Abstract

Motivated by the fact that some human emotional expressions promote affiliating functions such as signaling, social change, and support, all of which have been established as providing social benefits, we investigated how these behaviors can be extended to Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) scenarios. We explored how to furnish an android robot with socially motivated expressions geared toward eliciting adherence to COVID-19 guidelines. We analyzed how different behaviors associated with social expressions in such situations occur in Human-Human Interaction (HHI) and designed a scenario where a robot utilizes context-inspired behaviors (polite, gentle, displeased, and angry) to enforce social compliance. We then implemented these behaviors in an android robot and subjectively evaluated how effectively it expressed them and how they were perceived in terms of their appropriateness, effectiveness, and tendency to enforce social compliance to COVID-19 guidelines. We also considered how the subjects' sense of values regarding compliance awareness would affect the robot's behavior impressions. Our evaluation results indicated that participants generally preferred polite behaviors by a robot, although participants with different levels of compliance awareness manifested different trends toward appropriateness and effectiveness for social compliance enforcement through negative expressions by the robot.