Implications on Humanoid Robots in Pedagogical Applications from Cross-Cultural Analysis between Japan, Korea, and the USA

Humanoids are the most advanced robots and have been expected to act in various fields including education. Thus, it is important to investigate in different cultures what people actually assume when they encounter the word "humanoid robots," from not only a psychological perspective but also an engineering one, focusing on such aspects as design and market of robotics. For this aim, a cross-cultural research instrument, the robot assumptions questionnaire (RAQ) was administered to university students in Japan, Korea, and the USA. As a result, it was found that the Japanese students more strongly assume autonomy, social relationships, and emotional capacity of humanoid robots than the Korean and USA students, and there are more detailed cultural differences of assumptions about humanoids related to daily-life fields, in particular, pedagogical fields. Moreover, it was found that the USA students have more ambivalent images of humanoids than the Japanese students, and the Korean students have more careful attitudes toward humanoid robots than the Japanese students. In addition, the paper discusses engineering implications of the research results.