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Exploratory analysis of Sony AIBO users

AI & SOCIETY volume 34, pages 625–638 (2019)Cite this article

Abstract

It is important to understand how the cultural background, the age and the gender influence the expectations towards social robots. Although past works studied the user adaptation for some months, the users with multiple years of ownership (heavy users) were not subjects of any experiment to compare these criteria over the years. This exploratory research examines the owners of the discontinued Sony AIBO because these robots have not been abandoned by some enthusiastic users and they are still resold on the secondhand market. 78 Sony AIBO owners were recruited online and their quantitative data were analyzed by four independent variables (age, gender, culture, and length of ownership), user contribution and model preference points of view. The results revealed the motives to own these robots for years and how the heavy users perceived their social robots after a long period in the robot acceptance phase.

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Acknowledgements

The authors want to say thanks to all enthusiastic members of the aibo-life.org forums to fill out my questionnaire. Special thanks to Christoph Bartneck who shared his valuable research data to draw better conclusions in this paper.

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  1. Faculty of Communications, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Csaba Kertész & Markku Turunen

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  1. Csaba Kertész
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  2. Markku Turunen
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Correspondence to Csaba Kertész.

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Kertész, C., Turunen, M. Exploratory analysis of Sony AIBO users. AI & Soc 34, 625–638 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-018-0818-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-018-0818-8

Keywords

  • Quantitative research
  • Heavy users
  • Social robot
  • Sony AIBO