The Robot Form Factor Debate

There is a debate going on about the ideal form factor of robots. iRobot, of Roomba and Scooba fame, says that robots should not be of humanoid form. “Forget the anthropomorphic features,” says iRobot CEO Colin Angle. But science fiction legend Isaac Asimov disagrees, believing that human form robots are more practical since everything in the world is already built for the human shape.

But do consumers have a preference? New research provides some answers and, interestingly, it is based upon personality types. A team led by Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn at the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Computer Science concludes that people with more extrovert personalities tend to choose more human-looking and human-sounding, humanoid robots, while more introverted people tend to prefer mechanical-looking robots which by, the way, very well could have a head, but a metal head.

“After years of investigating Human Robot Interaction with hundreds of participants, we have looked at proxemics, an area which has not been studied before, and condensed all of this information into an empirical framework,” added Professor Dautenhahn. “Also, rather than producing a robot and then finding an application for it, we have involved people in the development of these People Bots right from the start.”

Proxemics? I learned a new word today.

by Mark Fleming on February 25, 2008 in Humanoid, Research