Socially Assistive Robots in Smart Homes: Design Factors that Influence the User Perception

Despite the growing interest in smart homes and robotics in many domains, very few studies have explored how socially assistive robots (SAR) can be integrated into smart homes to control them while socially interacting with people. This paper explores two factors - embodiment and movement - that influence the human-robot interaction into a domestic context. We conducted a within-subjects study with three conditions (disembodied-static, embodied-static, embodied-dynamic) involving the conventional population. Participants (N = 10) interacted into two speech-based tasks with an autonomous Temi robot fully integrated with a smart home (e.g., lights, room temperature, music, oven control) and answered questions about their perception towards the robot, including perceived sociability and social presence. The results indicated that participants perceived the embodied-movable robot as significantly more sociable and socially present than static or disembodied ones.