With the advancements in language processing, it becomes possible to have a fluent conversation with a robot. In this pilot and student project, older users interacted with a robot that was aware of their expressions (through additional hardware). We were happy to be able to bring Buddy (in Amsterdam fashion by cargo bike) to the Amstelhuis. Where they were kind enough to let us set up our experiment.
In two short conversations of about 5 minutes, the participants talked to Buddy about a health-related topic. One time Buddy could read expressions, the other time he could not. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feelings and opinions of the older users in the interactions.
In general, participants thought the conversations were fluent. The results indicated people did not notice whether Buddy could read facial expressions or not. People generally did not think Buddy was very human or natural. However, overall, Buddy was perceived as very friendly. In next steps we can further enhance the potential of Buddy, by better attuning the facial expressions of Buddy and using voice analysis.