Robot Harassment: Inappropriate Behaviors Against an Android Robot During Three-Year Exhibition

Although most people interact with social robots in daily environments in a friendly manner, some do not. They sometimes destroy, insult, bully, or abuse them. Uncovering such antisocial attitudes and behaviors is a painful but critical research topic in the process of deploying social robots in real society. In this study, we describe the robot harassment we observed in a three-year exhibition with an android robot. During the exhibition, visitors talked freely with the android robot, which autonomously handled the conversation topics. Many people enjoyed chatting with it in a friendly manner, although a few behaved rudely toward it. A coder labeled 26/971 scenes as “harassment” interactions and organized them into four subcategories: unwelcome flirting, rude attitudes, unsolicited comments about appearance, and inappropriate touching. We introduce these details and discuss possible research topics necessary to reduce such harassment behaviors.