Increasing Engagement with Chameleon Robots in Bartending Services

As the field of service robotics has been rapidly growing, it is expected for such robots to be endowed with the appropriate capabilities to interact with humans in a socially acceptable way. This is particularly relevant in the case of customer relationships where a positive and affective interaction has an impact on the users’ experience. In this paper, we address the question of whether a specific behavioral style of a barman-robot, acted through para-verbal and non-verbal behaviors, can affect users’ engagement and the creation of positive emotions. To that end, we endowed a barman-robot taking drink orders from human customers, with an empathic behavioral style. This aims at triggering to alignment process by mimicking the conversation partner’s behavior. This behavioral style is compared to an entertaining style, aiming at creating a positive relationship with the users, and a neutral style for control. Results suggest that when participants experienced more positive emotions, the robot was perceived as safer, so suggesting that interactions that stimulate positive and open relations with the robot may have a positive impact on the affective dimension of engagement. Indeed, when the empathic robot modulates its behavior according to the user’s one, this interaction seems to be more effective than when interacting with a neutral robot in improving engagement and positive emotions in public-service contexts.