Humanising robots could help us in Covid fight
Fangyuan Chen and Szu-chi Huang say that making service robots more familiar can foster a sense of camaraderie that could be a boon in the battle against the coronavirus
Back in April 2020, during the first coronavirus outbreak in Hong Kong, disinfection robots developed in the city were deployed at the airport. Today, as we face the risk of a fifth wave of infections, service robots are becoming more common. The issue we now need to consider to make these robots more effective is the emotional reaction people have towards them.
First, let’s look at how service robots have been used during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Essentially, robots are machines programmed by humans to perform an intended task. While years ago, robots were used primarily in industrial automation, today they are being deployed in the service sector to perform useful tasks for humans.
Depending on the application field, service robots can be further categorised as personal service robots (e.g. domestic servant robots) or professional service robots (e.g. firefighting robots and surgical robots).
The highly contagious nature of Covid-19 has accelerated the development and adoption of professional service robots, especially in areas that require human contact, such as delivery, cleaning and medical care.
According to a global comparison conducted by robotics scientists, China ranks in second place for instances of robot use in tackling Covid-19, as well as the technical readiness of its robots.
While engineers and entrepreneurs are working to improve the performance of these robots, we as human behaviour researchers are interested in their psychological impact – that is, how do people react to these robots, both emotionally and attitudinally?
We believe two factors are important here: first, the degree to which robots are humanised, and second, how we perceive the human-robot relationship.
Despite being highly efficient, robots often appear cold or ruthless. They lack the human capacity for emotions, and thus empathy. As a result, research shows that when being treated by machine-like robots, people tend to feel objectified, which then causes unfavourable feelings towards the robots, despite their ability to help people.
Thus, when a creepy-looking patrolling dog was used in Singapore parks to enforce social distancing, many people reported feeling uneasy. By contrast, the face mask-monitoring Pepper robot seems more friendly and social, with its human-looking appearance and ability to express emotions.
Despite being highly efficient, robots often appear cold or ruthless. They lack the human capacity for emotions, and thus empathy
Psychologists suggest that when non-human objects are made to look like humans, they become more familiar, understandable, and controllable. Therefore, people generally feel more comfortable interacting with a human-like (rather than machinelike) robot.
However, research has also shown that if there is a mismatch between a close-to-human robot’s anticipated human qualities and its actual, imperfect qualities, people will generate negative feelings.
Furthermore, research studies conducted in our lab found that how we perceive the robot-human relationship can influence our psychological responses to robots. Traditionally, people tend to view robots as subordinates that work for people to achieve an intended goal. However, we can also think of robots as teammates working shoulder to shoulder with humans to accomplish a shared goal.
Thinking of service robots as our teammates, instead of subordinates, has beneficial consequences: using controlled experiments, we find that people behave more prosocially (e.g. more willing to donate to others in need) if they perceive professional service robots that provide assistance in hazardous situations as teammates, rather than subordinates. A possible reason for this difference is that viewing robots as our teammates creates a sense of community, which motivates people to contribute to a collective welfare.
While no one knows when this pandemic will end, we can be sure that professional service robots will play an increasingly important role in the war against Covid-19.
Making these robots moderately human-like and portraying them as our teammates – as K11 MUSEA did in a recent promotional video – can potentially elicit more positive emotional reactions among people who encounter these robots.
Dr Fangyuan Chen is an assistant professor of marketing at Polytechnic University and Dr Szu-chi Huang is an associate professor of marketing at Stanford University