Can an Empathetic Teleoperated Robot Be a Working Mate that Supports Operator's Mentality?

Customer service with teleoperated robots is suscep-tible to the same problems related to stress as is emotional labor in general, such as for in-person customer service representatives. In this study, we aimed to reduce that stress by constructing a buddy-like rapport between the robot, which is the target of teleoperation, and its operator. For this purpose, we designed an empathetic interaction between the robot and the operator and conducted a customer service experiment to verify its effectiveness. Our results demonstrate that the proposed interaction can build rapport between the robot and the operator and the operator can feel more reassured. Although the effect on stress could not be isolated directly from the data, detailed analyses of the response to the questionnaires indicated that the proposed interaction may be useful to relieve stress.