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International Conference on Social Robotics

ICSR 2022: Social Robotics pp 574–586Cite as

Not that Uncanny After All? An Ethnographic Study on Android Robots Perception of Older Adults in Germany and Japan

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13818))

Abstract

Intercultural studies are scarce but yet insightful to better understand reactions of older adults to human-like Android robot behavior. They help to see which reactions of participants are universal and which are country specific. Research with android robots and older adults has many results that are based on online research with pictures or on research that has been carried out in labs in one country. Within a Japanese-European research project, we had the rare occasion to work with an android robot in both countries and compare the results. We collected data from 19 participants that were invited in a Living Lab at two universities in Japan and Germany. The data contains interviews, videos and questionnaires and was analyzed with a mixed method approach. Results indicate that the android robots of this study are not in the valley of the uncanny valley theory. We could observe that the older adults and stakeholders from both countries were open to talk to the robot, some even about private topics, while others preferred to use the robot to retrieve information. German participants wished for more gestures, while Japanese participants were keen on the relatively little number of gestures. With this work we contribute to a broader understanding on how older adults perceive android robots and could show that an android robot with its human-like appearance is not seen as uncanny.

The presented work has received funding from the European Union under grant agreement no. 101016453 and from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) of Japan under grand agreement no. JPJ000595.

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Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the participants, the reviewers and all other involved people. This paper is a shared result of all involved and we are thankful for the given support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Felix Carros, Berenike Bürvenich, Mehrbod Manavi, Rainer Wieching & Volker Wulf

  2. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Kashiwa, Japan

    Yoshio Matsumoto & Keiko Homma

  3. Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    Gabriele Trovato

  4. Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Ryan Browne & Toshimi Ogawa

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  1. Felix Carros
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Correspondence to Felix Carros .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Filippo Cavallo

  2. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  3. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Laura Fiorini

  4. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Alessandra Sorrentino

  5. Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

    Hongsheng He

  6. Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

    Xiaorui Liu

  7. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yoshio Matsumoto

  8. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

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Carros, F. et al. (2022). Not that Uncanny After All? An Ethnographic Study on Android Robots Perception of Older Adults in Germany and Japan. In: Cavallo, F., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13818. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24670-8_51

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24670-8_51

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