This study investigated how humans interact socially with robots. Participants engaged in a hallway navigation task with a robot. Throughout twelve trials, the display on the robot and its proxemics behavior was varied while participants were tasked with first, reacting to the robot’s actions and second, interpreting its behavior. Results indicated that proxemic behavior and robotic display characteristics influence the degree to which individuals perceive the robot as socially present, with more human-like displays and assertive robotic behaviors resulting in greater assessments of social presence. When examined in isolation, repeated interactions over time do not appear to affect the perception of a socially present robot under these particular circumstances. Results are discussed in the context of how social signals theory inform research in human-robot interaction.
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