Cultural Differences in how an Engagement-Seeking Robot should Approach a Group of People

Michiel Joosse, Ronald Poppe, Manja Lohse, Vanessa Evers

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

    49 Citations (Scopus)
    332 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    In our daily life everything and everyone occupies an amount of space, simply by “being there‿. Edward Hall coined the term proxemics for the studies of man’s use of this space. This paper presents a study on proxemics in Human-Robot Interaction and particularly on robot’s approaching groups of people. As social psychology research found proxemics to be culturally dependent, we focus on the question of the appropriateness of the robot’s approach behavior in different cultures. We present an online survey (N=181) that was distributed in three countries; China, the U.S. and Argentina. Our results show that participants prefer a robot that stays out of people’s intimate space zone just like a human would be expected to do. With respect to cultural differences, Chinese participants showed high-contact responses and believed closer approaches were appropriate compared to their U.S. counterparts. Argentinian participants more closely resembled the ratings of the U.S. participants.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 5th ACM international conference on Collaboration across boundaries: Culture, Distance & Technology (CABS 2014)
    Place of PublicationNew York
    PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
    Pages121-130
    Number of pages10
    ISBN (Print)978-1-4503-2557-8
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 22 Aug 2014
    Event5th ACM International Conference on Collaboration Across Boundaries: Culture, Distance & Technology, CABS 2014 - Kyoto, Japan
    Duration: 21 Aug 201422 Aug 2014
    Conference number: 5

    Conference

    Conference5th ACM International Conference on Collaboration Across Boundaries: Culture, Distance & Technology, CABS 2014
    Abbreviated titleCABBS
    Country/TerritoryJapan
    CityKyoto
    Period21/08/1422/08/14

    Keywords

    • HMI-HF: Human Factors
    • Cross-cultural survey
    • Proximity
    • EC Grant Agreement nr.: FP7/2007-2013
    • Human robot interaction
    • Social robotics
    • Online survey
    • Social interaction
    • EC Grant Agreement nr.: FP7/600877

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