Taking candy from a robot: Speed features and candy accessibility predict human response

In our experiment, two autonomously moving costumed robots visit 256 offices during a ‘reverse’ trick-or-treating task close to Halloween. Our behavioral data supports the idea that people interpret a robot´s non-verbal cues, as the robots´ costuming and baskets of candy seem to have communicated an implicit offer of candy. In fact, one third of our detection instances occurred during robot transit, i.e., while the robots were making no verbal offer. We find that candy accessibility dominates any social influence of robot orientation and that robot speed influences both whether people will interrupt a robot in transit (slow more interruptible) and whether they will respond to its verbal offer (fast more salient).