Impact of Table-Top Robots on Questionnaire Response Rates at a Science Museum

Abstract To facilitate the integration of robot applications in real environments, evaluating whether or how much the presence of a robot entity influences human behavior is important. In addition, it is necessary to evaluate the influence of voice-only systems, which can be implemented more easily than robots. Therefore, in this study, we conducted two experiments to evaluate the visitor behavior at a science museum when requested to respond to a questionnaire under one of three different conditions (Robot, Audio, or None). The results indicated that using the robot improved the response rate more than using the audio alone or with no intervention. Audio intervention also increased the response rate compared with no intervention. While the robots increased their number of responses, there was a trend toward an increase in emotional responses rather than opinions in the free-response descriptions. These results are important for promoting the future use of robots.