Designing a receptionist robot: Effect of voice and appearance on anthropomorphism

Robots are possible candidates for performing tasks as helpers in activities of daily living in the future: working as a receptionist is one possible employment. However, the way the receptionist robot should appear, sound and behave needs to be investigated carefully, in order to design a robot which is accepted and perceived in a positive way by common users. This paper describes a study on anthropomorphism of a receptionist robot made for Brazilian people depending on the appearance and on the voice of the receptionist. This experiment was preceded by a preliminary survey about expectation of people regarding receptionists. The main experiment consisted in having Brazilian people interacting with a conversational agent and with a humanoid robot through a video conference. The two receptionists are not only different in physical appearance, but in the sound of the voice, too, which can be either human-like or robotic sound. The two receptionists gave indications to the participants to reach rooms where they could evaluate the receptionists through questionnaires concerning anthropomorphism and uncanniness among other concepts. The results gathered from both experiments provide useful hints to design a receptionist robot.