Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Robovie as a Mascot: A Qualitative Study for Long-Term Presence of Robots in a Shopping Mall

  • Published:
International Journal of Social Robotics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper, which reports a qualitative study on a social robot in a local shopping mall in Japan, explores how visitors interacted, understood, and accepted it. In the shopping mall where we conducted our study, Robovie, a humanoid robot, has been tested for 3 years. Based on this context of long-term exposure to a social robot, we conducted short-term interviews and observations with the visitors to the mall. We analyzed the obtained qualitative data by a grounded-theory approach and identified four common trends: (1) association of the robot with its location; (2) assigning of future roles to the robot; (3) perceiving it as a form of entertainment for children, i.e., as a mascot; and (4) perception of autonomy is independent of how the robot works. One might expect people to automatically see the robot as a utility, but instead they tended to consider it a suitable mascot.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Introducing this specific question was the result of a combination of factors: (a) some interviewees suggested it in a few preliminary interviews; (b) we considered the cultural fact that in Japan shopping malls, companies, and prefectures create their own mascots; (c) the need to understand whether Robovie was perceived as an information interface or rather more like a friendly character. In the end “mascot” seemed a more descriptive reference than “character”. Since mall visitors are generally looking to buy, our interviews had to be short. Thus, we thought it reasonable to ask a variety of quick questions aimed at understanding how visitors imagined Robovie. With this question, we later verified whether the idea of Robovie in effect matched that of mascots in Japan.

References

  1. Burgard W et al (1998) The interactive museum tour-guide robot. In: National conference on artificial intelligence (AAAI1998). pp 11–18

  2. Shiomi M, Kanda T, Ishiguro H, Hagita N (2007) Interactive humanoid robots for a science museum. IEEE Intell Syst 22:25–32

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Thrun S et al (1999) Minerva: a second-generation museum tour-guide robot. In: IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA1999). pp 1999–2005

  4. Siegwart R et al (2003) Robox at Expo. 02: a large scale installation of personal robots. Robot Auton Syst 42:203–222

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Gockley R et al (2005) Designing robots for long-term social interaction. In: IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS2005). pp 1338–1343

  6. Gross H-M et al (2008) Shopbot: progress in developing an interactive mobile shopping assistant for everyday use. In: IEEE international conference on systems, man, and cybernetics (SMC2008). pp 3471–3478

  7. Pineau J, Montemerlo M, Pollack M, Roy N, Thrun S (2003) Towards robotic assistants in nursing homes: challenges and results. Robot Auton Syst 42:271–281

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Mazzolai B et al (2008) Networked and cooperating robots for urban hygiene: the eu funded dustbot project. In: The 5th international conference on ubiquitous robots and ambient intelligence (URAI 2008)

  9. Ferri G et al (2011) Dustcart, an autonomous robot for door-to-door garbage collection: from dustbot project to the experimentation in the small town of Peccioli. In: IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA2011). pp 655–660

  10. Mutlu B, Forlizzi J (2008) Robots in organizations: the role of workflow, social, and environmental factors in human–robot interaction. In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI2008). pp 287–294

  11. Iwamura Y, Shiomi M, Kanda T, Ishiguro H, Hagita N (2011) Do Elderly people prefer a conversational humanoid as a shopping assistant partner in supermarkets? In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI2011). pp 449–456

  12. Weiss A et al (2010) Robots asking for directions: the willingness of passers-by to support robots. In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI2010). pp 23–30

  13. Heerink M, Kröse B, Wielinga B, Evers V (2008) Enjoyment, intention to use and actual use of a conversational robot by elderly people. In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI2008). pp 113–120

  14. Heerink M, Kröse B, Evers V, Wielinga B (2010) Assessing acceptance of assistive social agent technology by older adults: the Almere model. Int J Soc Robot 2:361–375

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Bartneck C, Kulic D, Croft E, Zoghbi S (2009) Measurement instruments for the anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety of robots. Int J Soc Robot 1:71–81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Kamide H et al (2012) New measurement of psychological safety for humanoid. In: Proceedings of the seventh annual ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction. ACM, pp 49–56

  17. Kahn PH Jr et al (2012) Robovie, you’ll have to go into the closet now: children’s social and moral relationships with a humanoid robot. Dev Psychol 48:303

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Nomura T, Suzuki T, Kanda T, Kato K (2006) Measurement of negative attitudes toward robots. Interact Stud 7:437–454

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Steinfeld A et al (2006) Common metrics for human–robot interaction. In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI2006). pp 33–40

  20. Forlizzi J (2007) How robotic products become social products: an ethnographic study of cleaning in the home. In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI2007). pp 129–136

  21. Lee MK, Kiesler S, Forlizzi J, Rybski P (2012) Ripple effects of an embedded social agent : a field study of a social robot in the workplace. In: ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI2012). pp 695–704

  22. Sabelli AM, Kanda T, Hagita N (2011) A conversational robot in an elderly care center: an ethnographic study. In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI2011). pp 37–44

  23. Kanda T, Ishiguro H, Imai M, Ono T (2004) Development and evaluation of interactive humanoid robots. Proc IEEE 92:1839–1850

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Morales Y, Kanda T, Hagita N (2014) Walking together: side by side walking model for an interacting robot. J Hum Robot Interact 3:51–73

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Zheng K, Glas DF, Kanda T, Ishiguro H, Hagita N (2011) How many social robots can one operator control? In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI 2011). Lausanne, Switzerland, pp 379–386

  26. Glas DF et al (2012) The network robot system: enabling social human–robot interaction in public spaces. J Hum Robot Interact 1:5–32

    Google Scholar 

  27. Glaser BG, Strauss A (1967) The discovery of grounded theory. Aldine DeGruyter, Hawthorne

    Google Scholar 

  28. Gibson B, Hartman J (2013) Rediscovering grounded theory. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  29. Tolhurst E (2012) Grounded theory method: sociology’s quest for exclusive items of inquiry. In: Forum Qual Sozialforschung Forum Qual Soc Res 13(3)

  30. Forlizzi J, DiSalvo C (2006) Service robots in the domestic environment: a study of the roomba vacuum in the home. In: ACM/IEEE international conference on human–robot interaction (HRI2006). pp 258–265

  31. Sung J, Grinter RE, Christensen HI (2010) Domestic robot ecology. Int J Soc Robot 2:417–429

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Syrdal DS, Dautenhahn K, Koay KL, Walters ML, Otero NR (2010) Exploring human mental models of robots through explicitation interviews. In: RO-MAN, 2010 IEEE. IEEE, pp 638–645

  33. Yanco HA et al (2015) Analysis of human–robot interaction at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials. J Field Robot 32:420–444

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Huber A, Lammer L, Weiss A, Vincze M (2014) Designing adaptive roles for socially assistive robots: a new method to reduce technological determinism and role stereotypes. J Hum Robot Interact 3:100–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Koizumi, Mr. Hato, and Ms. Taniguchi for their help. This research was supported by JST CREST.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL, USA

    Alessandra Maria Sabelli

  2. Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International IRC, 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, Japan

    Takayuki Kanda

Authors
  1. Alessandra Maria Sabelli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Takayuki Kanda
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Takayuki Kanda.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (txt 3 KB)

Supplementary material 2 (cls 46 KB)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Sabelli, A.M., Kanda, T. Robovie as a Mascot: A Qualitative Study for Long-Term Presence of Robots in a Shopping Mall. Int J of Soc Robotics 8, 211–221 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-015-0332-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-015-0332-9

Keywords