Investigating the Influence of Cultural Backgrounds on Proxemics to Telepresence Robots

This paper reports on a study investigating the influence of cultural background on the distance people keep in communication mediated by telepresence robots. Such robots are used increasingly to allow people to connect across distances without traveling for economic, ecological, and even political reasons. However, little is known about how and whether differences in face-to-face communication between people from different cultural backgrounds also play a role in communication mediated by a telepresence robot. To close that gap and inform the design of telepresence robots, we ran a study with 20 participants from Germany and 20 from Cameroon, who talked to each other in different pairs via a telepresence robot. Our results suggest that their cultural background had an influence on distancing behavior and on the comfort they perceived with the distance. These and other results inform the design of telepresence robots for intercultural settings.