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Exploring the Entertainment Value of Playing Games with a Humanoid Robot

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Abstract

Besides providing functional support, socially assistive robots can provide social support in the form of entertainment. Previous studies have shown that this type of social support improves elderly people’s well-being significantly. But it is still far from clear what underlying causes drive people’s judgment of entertainment value. Showing emotionally expressive behaviors seems to raise entertainment value, but what if these behaviors are not truly embodied, i.e., tied to processes in the environment? It would seem that it is important that expressive behaviors are tied to the proper events. In this study, we investigated whether multimodal behavioral patterns (i.e., combinations of gestures, eye LED patterns, and verbal expressions) based on the developments within a game aids the entertainment value. We chose a gaming situation where the robot plays Mastermind with a human, in which the robot could show no behavioral patterns, behavioral patterns tied to game progress, or randomly selected behavioral patterns from the same set. The behavioral patterns were designed to imitate four basic emotions (neutral, happy, angry, sad) in combination with five levels of surprise and five levels of confidence. In a pilot study we validated the correct interpretation of the behavioral patterns. The experimental setup was designed to collect information about which behaviors to choose. The results of our study confirmed that a robot playing games with people has entertainment value. The main technical contribution is the information we collected on the behaviors.

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Acknowledgments

The KSERA project (http://www.ksera-project.eu) received funding from the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) for Research and Technological Development under grant agreement n2010-248085.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Technology Interaction, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Raymond H. Cuijpers

  2. Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    David O. Johnson

  3. University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Kathrin Pollmann

  4. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Antoine A. J. van de Ven

Authors
  1. David O. Johnson
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  2. Raymond H. Cuijpers
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  3. Kathrin Pollmann
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  4. Antoine A. J. van de Ven
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David O. Johnson.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Behavioral Patterns

See Table 5.

Table 5 Overview of all behavioral patterns expressed by the robot during the Curiosity Block
Full size table

Overview of all behavioral patterns expressed by the robot during the Random Block.

The behavioral patterns shown during the random block are identical with those used in the curiosity block. However, when the robot makes a guess its confidence level (0–4) is chosen randomly and when the robot receives feedback its surprise level (0–2) and valence (positive/negative) is chosen randomly as well.

See Table 6.

Table 6 Overview of all behavioral patterns expressed by the robot during the Neutral Block
Full size table

Appendix 2: Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS)

This scale consists of a number of words that describe different feelings and emotions. Read each item and then indicate on the scale below to what extent you feel this way right now, that is, at the present moment.

figure a

Appendix 3: Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ)

Please indicate on the scale below how you felt while playing the game.

Please only think about the last round of Mastermind you have been playing (and not the rounds you played earlier during this experiment).

figure b
figure c

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Johnson, D.O., Cuijpers, R.H., Pollmann, K. et al. Exploring the Entertainment Value of Playing Games with a Humanoid Robot. Int J of Soc Robotics 8, 247–269 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-015-0331-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-015-0331-x

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