| dc.description.abstract | With robots becoming popular in a variety of areas of life and an expected growth of robots in our future society, the impact of robotics on society is likely to increase (Enz, Diruf, Spielhagen, Zoll, & Vargas, 2011). To make robots successful artificial companions, the concerns and attitudes among potential human users need to be addressed (Enz et al., 2011). This is why the present study investigated the evaluation of potential future robot roles from the perspective of the general public. The research reported here is explicitly explorative and the findings should help pave the way to formulating guidelines that will inform technology design with the goal of developing acceptable robots. An online questionnaire was conducted on Amazon Turk (n= 510) where participants evaluated potential future robot application scenarios in order to map how humanlike people desire the future robots in our society to be in terms of appearance and cognition, and to examine people’s attitudes towards potential future roles of robots. The results of this study show that people’s nationality, age, gender, and level of education influence their attitude towards potential future roles of robots and how humanlike people desire future robots to be. Lastly, preliminary guidelines meant to propel the development of future robots in a desirable direction are presented. | |
