Characteristics of robot as interface for information access

This paper investigates the characteristics of robots for non-industrial use such as home robots, when those are used as an interface for accessing information. Although the support based on information is one of important capabilities home robots should have, it has not been fully studied what are the merits of providing information via a robot compared with accessing information via PC or a mobile phone. In order to investigate the merit, two experiments are performed in this paper. The experimental result show a robot can effectively attract users when providing (recommending) information. It is also shown information provided by the prototype can promote the communication among users. The obtained result supports the significance of performing information support by home robots, and be used for designing home robots that provide information-based support.