Teleoperated Robot Acting Autonomous for Better Customer Satisfaction

In recent years, an increasing number of teleoperated robots have been used to provide services from a remote location. Most earlier teleoperated robot systems informed the customers that the robots are being remotely controlled, while the customers believed that they were communicating with the operators through the robots. However, it has already been shown that there are some disadvantages in informing customers about the robot teleoperation. To investigate whether customers could accept and use teleoperated robots that acted as if they were autonomous, we developed a teleoperated system in which operators represent autonomous robots. Our system was experimentally tested by employing operators that provided services to customers in a real field. It was found that many customers were particularly satisfied with the service of the teleoperated robots that behaved as if they were autonomous, while we demonstrated that customers who did not realize the robot teleoperation rated the service higher than the customers who realized the same.