Familiar behaviors evaluation for a robotic interface of practicality and familiarity

Robotic interfaces for home applications need a combination of practical behaviors and familiar behaviors. Recently, robotic interfaces have been attracting attention in view of their potential to serve as intermediaries between complicated information equipment and users. Such an interface requires practical behaviors to execute the user's orders securely, and also familiar behaviors to accept the user's orders exactly. Following the example of Piaget's circular reactions, the robot repeats the user's instructions. For example, when the robot interface receives user's channel change request, it not only changes the channel but also speaks in a friendly manner, e.g. saying "the 4th channel, the 4th channel." The user naturally thinks that the robot understands the request exactly. Based on this concept, a new robotic interface combines practicality and familiarity. In this paper, the effects of familiar behaviors installed in a robotic information home appliance, "ApriAlpha™", are studied. The experimental results show that the task execution with speech repetition, object gazing and moving to object has the highest score for the familiar factor. Elderly people tend to prefer familiar behaviors more than young people do.