Investigation of differences on impressions of and behaviors toward real and virtual robots between elder people and university students

To investigate differences on impressions of and behaviors toward anthropomorphized artifacts between different generations, a psychological experiment was conducted with between-subjects design of the elderly vs. university students and a small-sized real humanoid robot vs. a virtual CG robot on a computer display. The results showed that 1) more elderly subjects complied with the real robot than the student subjects, 2) the elderly subjects felt more positive impressions of both the robots than the student subjects, 3) the student subjects felt less attachment to the virtual robot than the real robot, and 4) the student subjects felt less attachment to the virtual robot in comparison with the elderly subjects. Then, the paper discusses implications on assistive robots for the elderly in domestic fields.