Lionel Jr Robert

Annette M. Masterson, Wonse Jo, Helena C. Sieh et al.

Robots are increasingly integrated into everyday contexts, including museums, where they can both entertain and educate visitors. To enhance visitor experience and engagement, we present a novel mixed-agent tour guide system that combines a physical robot with a projected virtual agent that actively participates in the tour through conversation and interaction, achieving the interaction richness of two mobile agents from a single platform. We validate the system through a within-subjects study with 30 participants to assess engagement, quality of experience, and learning performance. Participants experienced different conversational styles and agent configurations, and data were collected via surveys, behavioral sensors, and interviews. Results showed that engagement and quality of experience remained consistent across conditions. Learning performance revealed a significant gender-moderated difference: the mixed-agent conditions improved learning performance for female participants. This suggests that the proposed dyadic conversational style in this paper influenced learning performance differently by gender. Nonetheless, in interviews, participants reported a greater preference for mixed-agent teams regardless of gender, citing interaction as a key factor in their experience.

Qiaoning Zhang, X. Jessie Yang, Lionel P. Robert

Automated vehicles (AVs) are social robots that can potentially benefit our society. According to the existing literature, AV explanations can promote passengers' trust by reducing the uncertainty associated with the AV's reasoning and actions. However, the literature on AV explanations and trust has failed to consider how the type of trust - cognitive versus affective - might alter this relationship. Yet, the existing literature has shown that the implications associated with trust vary widely depending on whether it is cognitive or affective. To address this shortcoming and better understand the impacts of explanations on trust in AVs, we designed a study to investigate the effectiveness of explanations on both cognitive and affective trust. We expect these results to be of great significance in designing AV explanations to promote AV trust.

Qiaoning Zhang, Connor Esterwood, X. Jessie Yang et al.

To better understand the impacts of similarities and dissimilarities in human and AV personalities we conducted an experimental study with 443 individuals. Generally, similarities in human and AV personalities led to a higher perception of AV safety only when both were high in specific personality traits. Dissimilarities in human and AV personalities also yielded a higher perception of AV safety, but only when the AV was higher than the human in a particular personality trait.