The effect of robot´s behavior vs. appearance on communication with humans

This study explores the effect of the robot´s appearance vs. behavior (voice and gestures) on the way it is perceived as a machine-like instead of a human-like robot. A between-subjects experiment with four conditions was conducted. Results suggest that both the robot´s behavior and appearance are important but, if they are contradictory, the robot´s behavior is more powerful than the robot´s appearance in the perception of the robot as more machine-like or human-like.