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Robotic experience companionship in music listening and video watching

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Abstract

We propose the notion of robotic experience companionship (REC): a person’s sense of sharing an experience with a robot. Does a robot’s presence and response to a situation affect a human’s understanding of the situation and of the robot, even without direct human–robot interaction? We present the first experimental assessment of REC, studying people’s experience of entertainment media as they share it with a robot. Both studies use an autonomous custom-designed desktop robot capable of performing gestures synchronized to the media. Study I (\(n=67\)), examining music listening companionship, finds that the robot’s dance-like response to music causes participants to feel that the robot is co-listening with them, and increases their liking of songs. The robot’s response also increases its perceived human character traits. We find REC to be moderated by music listening habits, such that social listeners were more affected by the robot’s response. Study II (\(n=91\)), examining video watching companionship supports these findings, demonstrating that social video viewers enjoy the experience more with the robot present, while habitually solitary viewers do not. Also in line with Study I, the robot’s response to the video clip causes people to attribute more positive human character traits to the robot. This has implications for robots as companions for digital media consumption, but also suggests design implications based on REC for other shared experiences with personal robots.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Shoshana Krug for assistance in running the study, as well as Avital Mentovich and Oren Zuckerman for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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  1. Shira Bauman

    Present address: The MITRE Corporation, 7515 Colshire Dr, McLean, VA, 22102, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Media Innovation Lab, IDC Herzliya, P. O. Box 167, 46150, Herzliya, Israel

    Guy Hoffman, Shira Bauman & Keinan Vanunu

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  1. Guy Hoffman
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Correspondence to Guy Hoffman.

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This research was supported by EC-FP7 CIG #293733. Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Case Number 15-2085.

Ms Bauman’s affiliation with The MITRE Corporation is provided for identification purposes only, and is not intended to convey or imply MITRE’s concurrence with, or support for, the positions, opinions, or viewpoints expressed by the author.

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Hoffman, G., Bauman, S. & Vanunu, K. Robotic experience companionship in music listening and video watching. Pers Ubiquit Comput 20, 51–63 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-015-0897-1

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