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BY-NC-ND 3.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access September 9, 2010

The influence of robot anthropomorphism on the feelings of embarrassment when interacting with robots

  • Christoph Bartneck EMAIL logo , Timo Bleeker , Jeroen Bun , Pepijn Fens and Lynyrd Riet

Abstract

Medical robots are expected to help with providing care in an aging society. The degree to which patients experience embarrassment in a medical examination might be influenced by the robots’ level of anthropomorphism. The results of our preliminary study show that young, healthy, Dutch university students were less embarrassed when interacting with a technical box than with a robot. Highly human-like robots might therefore not be the best choice for a medical robot. This result also shows that the robot was perceived as a person more so than the technical box. The next step is to compare the robot to a real nurse or doctor. If patients are less embarrassed when interacting with a robot, then, potentially, patients will be less likely to defer important medical examinations when carried out by medical robots.

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Received: 2010-5-21
Accepted: 2010-7-1
Published Online: 2010-9-9
Published in Print: 2010-6-1

© Christoph Bartneck et al.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

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