Exploratory design of non-verbal politeness of a robotic arm

Social norms should be considered when designing the behavior of social robots. Politeness is a common social norm in human-human interactions, which can influence human-robot interaction. We present an exploratory, experimental design for non-verbal aspects of politeness of a robotic manipulator. Polite behaviors were defined using a combination of lights on the robot’s body and movements of the robotic arm, forming four levels of politeness: visual-actionable polite, visual polite, actionable polite, and no-polite. In a between-subject user study with 40 children (aged 8-10), the child and the robot conducted a joint pick-and-place memory task with increasing difficulty. Results revealed that task performance improved with the experimental progress, and the willingness of the children to continue with another task was high. Yet, polite behaviors did not improve performance. Implications for future research are discussed.