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Factors for Personalization and Localization to Optimize Human–Robot Interaction: A Literature Review

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Abstract

Social service robots are becoming increasingly pervasive in our everyday lives, including in healthcare, education and customer service settings. It is known that different cultures and individuals have an array of diverse expectations when interacting with robots. These expectations influence acceptability and willingness to engage with them. However, previous research in this field mostly focuses on a sole human-related factor that may impact interaction and the acceptability of robots both within and across groups of people. This review aims to synthesize the existing literature on human factors to consider when designing robots that can be personalized or localized (transferred to other cultures). The literature review highlights key studies in this area and synthesizes them into four overarching factors: (1) communication and language, (2) behavior and service, (3) proxemics, and (4) interface design. The review shows that personalization and localization in robotics needs to move beyond catering to simple language preferences or accents. Instead, this encompasses the intricate details of interface design, service expectations, proxemics and individual and cultural communication styles and cultural values that users may possess. This study consequently highlights key considerations when attempting to optimize human–robot interaction across individuals and cultures.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Institute for Information and Communications Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No. 2020-0-00842, Development of Cloud Robot Intelligence for Continual Adaptation to User Reactions in Real Service Environments).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Medicine, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Norina Gasteiger

  2. School of Health Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Norina Gasteiger

  3. Département d’Informatique, Facultés des Sciences et Ingénieries, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

    Mehdi Hellou

  4. Department of Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering, CARES, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Mehdi Hellou & Ho Seok Ahn

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  1. Norina Gasteiger
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  2. Mehdi Hellou
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  3. Ho Seok Ahn
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HS conceived the initial idea as the principal investigator of this project. NG and MH located and synthesized the literature. NG drafted the manuscript and designed the figures. All authors discussed the results and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ho Seok Ahn.

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Gasteiger, N., Hellou, M. & Ahn, H.S. Factors for Personalization and Localization to Optimize Human–Robot Interaction: A Literature Review. Int J of Soc Robotics 15, 689–701 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-021-00811-8

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