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A Study of Objective Evaluation Indicator Based on Robot Activity Logs for Owner Attachment to Companion Robot

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Abstract

People love companion animals as part of the family. However, recently there are some problems such as the anxiety about caring for animals and a lack of space to breed companion animals; therefore, companion robots are expected to be an alternative to companion animals. For the development of companion robots that are loved by their owners, it is necessary to know how attached the owners are to their companion robot. However, previous evaluation methods based on interviews or questionnaires only measure the degree of the owner’s attachment at the time when the evaluation is conducted; hence periodic measurement needs to be repeated to measure long-term changes in attachment. In this paper, we focus on the activity logs of the companion robot, which is highly objective and can be collected at a low cost, and examine the possibility of using the data as an evaluation indicator of the owner’s attachment degree. We compared the robot activity logs with questionnaire-based attachment ratings collected from companion robot owners (N = 259). We found that owners who highly rated their attachment to the companion robot in the subjective evaluation questionnaire were more likely to interact with the robot, such as holding the robot and calling the robot’s name. The result indicates the possibility of using robot activity logs as an objective indicator of the owner’s attachment degree.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The LOVOT project involves over one hundred people.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GROOVE X, Inc., Sumitomo Fudosan Bodg. 3-42-3 Nihonbashi-Hamacho Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 103-0007, Japan

    Megumi Takada & Kaname Hayashi

  2. Faculty of Informatics, Tokyo City University, 3-3-1 Ushikubo-Nishi, Tsuzuki-Ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 224-8551, Japan

    Junko Ichino

Authors
  1. Megumi Takada
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  2. Junko Ichino
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  3. Kaname Hayashi
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by MT. Data analysis was done by MT and JI. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MT and all authors commented on the previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Megumi Takada.

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Conflicts of interest

Megumi Takada is an employee of GROOVE X. Kaname Hayashi is the founder of GROOVE X.

Ethical Approval

This study has not undergone ethics review as it is deemed not to require review in accordance with the ethics regulations of the Tokyo City University Ethics Review Committee.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 7.

Table 7 PBS Questionnaire items
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Appendix 2

See Table 8.

Table 8 LOVOT’s constantly transmitted data in the survey in 2020
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Takada, M., Ichino, J. & Hayashi, K. A Study of Objective Evaluation Indicator Based on Robot Activity Logs for Owner Attachment to Companion Robot. Int J of Soc Robotics 16, 125–143 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-01030-z

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