Keywords

1 Introduction

For many public libraries, child patrons are one of the major user groups, and they are also the most active users in the library [1]. Viewing children as the future clients, public libraries actually devote many efforts to do researches or activities for child patrons. However, difficulties may be encountered due to child patrons’ physical limits or literacy skills that hindered their use of the library resources. It is often that child patrons need and require librarians or adults’ help to get library services and resources, therefore an assistive agent is of help to child patrons’ library use.

Human interaction involves various intentions and actions that reflected these intentions. A typical representation of the phenomena is described by Hall [2] as the “personal space,” where people stay in a certain distance in an interaction to show their intentions to interact with the others and the current situation [3]. When the distance between two people is short that may mean their relationship is close, and vice versa. Studies regarding the human-robot interaction support that the personal space also appears inevitably [4] that reflects human intentions to interact with the robots. In addition, another critical but less-explored factor that affect human-robot interaction is contextual effect [5]. Contextual cues are what people sense and rely on to proceed with conversations, and cannot be overlooked in the exploration of any interaction.

Motivated by the aforementioned issues, this study intends to explore child patrons’ interaction with robots by assessing the interpersonal distance under a specific context of library. In addition to the general exploration on human preference and performance in HRI, it is expected to understand more profoundly the activities and intentions people possessed through the systematical investigation of interaction context and structural measurement of interpersonal distance.

2 Research Design

This study investigates the personal space and the attitude that child patrons possessed under different kinds of contexts in order to better understand child patrons’ thinking toward the library robots. To obtain valid data, a designated experiment was conducted to extract insight from users’ actual behaviors instead of reported opinions and impression without actual experience. Also, to better understand how child patrons’ behave in different contexts, this research used the factors that discussed in previous studies: users’ age, gender, and robots’ appearance as variables to see the difference. Quasi-experiment was therefore adopted as the proper research method to approach the context targeted by this research.

To understand child patrons’ feelings and movements in the interaction with the robot, this study used two robots of different appearance: the human-like robot named “Julia”, compared to the machine-like robot named “Book Smile”. Except for the appearance, the technical specs of the two robots were identical. Both robots were equipped with lasers to detect obstacle and participant’s feet for measuring distance data automatically.

During the experiment, the users’ personal space would be measured and the movement of the participant would be observed through the task. First, the users’ personal space would be measured and taken by the robot during the book recommending and retrieving tasks. Also, the action of the participant would be observed and recorded during the entire experiment process by the video camera to see what kinds of facial expressions, movements, or other body languages the participant had to the robot.

This study also developed the paper-based questionnaire after the experiment task to investigate the participants’ attitude to robots, the participants’ robot appearance preference, and the participants’ demographic information. The instruments were modified versions from the robot anxiety scale (RAS) and Negative attitudes toward robots scale (NARS) from Nomura, Kanda, Suzuki, and Kato’s research [6]. The reliability and validity of the instrument was tested and sufficient (Cronbach’s α = 0.77).

3 Preliminary Findings

This study recruited 77 participants from 3rd grade to 6th grade (age 9–12) from an elementary school in Taipei. And the experiments were conducted in the library of this elementary school. The ratio of gender was 34:43 (boy: girl). All participants participated in the experiments under their free wills and parents’ consents, and one participant dropped out during the experiment, which made the valid sample of 76 persons. These participants were divided into two groups to interact with robots with human-like appearance and machine-like appearance respectively.

3.1 Participants’ Personal Space and Attitude Toward Robots of Different Appearance

To investigate whether the robot’s appearance will affect the personal space the participants’ keep from the robot. The study used the data from human-like robot (Julia) group and machine-like robot (Book Smile) group to run independent groups of T-test to see the difference. The descriptive statistics shown that when the participant interacted with the human-like robot, the average personal space was 0.35 m, which was the level of intimate space according to Hall (1966) (distance < 0.45 m). On the other hand, the participant who interacted with the machine-like robot, Book Smile, performed the personal space in 0.75 m. Although the later one was relatively far than the former one, the personal space that the participant shown was still in the level of personal space (distance < 1.2 m) which represented that the participant were willing to interact with the robot from social space to the closer space—personal space.

There were significant differences existed in the personal space between the human-like robot (Julia) group and the machine-like robot (Book Smile) group. The personal space the participants kept when interacting with Julia was significantly closer than the other group. In addition, participants would approach the human-like robot (Julia) to take the book, and stayed in front of the robot to read the content. However, the participant would backward immediately after taking the book from the machine-like robot (Book Smile), and read the content in certain distance away from the robot (Table 1).

Table 1. Personal space when Interacting with robots of different appearance
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To investigate whether the robot’s appearance will affect the attitude the participants’ had to the robot. The study used the questionnaire data from human-like robot (Julia) group and machine-like robot (Book Smile) group to run independent groups of T-test to see the difference. Different groups of the participants’ comfort attitude to the robot were shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Participants’ attitude when interacting with robots of different appearance
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The results showed that the comfort attitude that participants had were positive. Among all the questions, the Julia group scored the “I feel comforted being with robots that have emotions” highest (M = 4.59). Also, the participants felt least comfortable when the robots approached them. This may because that the participants didn’t know they were going to interact with the robot before the experiment and felt confused. However, there was no significant difference between two groups of the participants.

In the feeling of the library tasks, the results were positive which showed that the participants were willing to have robots to recommend readings. Also, the scores of the feeling of the task were higher than the robot attitude. The participants regarded robots as communicable and trustworthy, also they felt the conversations with the library robot were relevant. The overall data showed that the participants’ attitude toward the two robots was not significantly different. Despite of different appearance, a possible inference was that the both robots had the features and functions that the children preferred. While Julia and Book Smile robot used cartoon-like design concepts and elements, the results might not reflect significant difference in the two groups.

3.2 Gender Difference in Personal Space and Attitude Toward Different Robots

To investigate whether the participants’ gender would affect the personal space the participants’ keep from the robot. The study used the data from boy and girl groups to run independent groups of T-test to see the difference. The results showed that when the boy interacted with the robot, the average personal space was 0.72 m, which was the level of personal space (distance < 1.2 m). On the other hand, the girl who interacted with the robot (girl features) performed the personal space in 0.43 m, which was in the range of intimate space (distance < 0.45 m), and was closer than the former one. It may be said that the girl was more willing to interact with the robot than the boy (Table 3).

Table 3. Participants’ personal space when interacting with the human-like robot
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The results of the t-test analysis showed significant difference between the boys and girls groups. The personal space the girls kept when interacting with the robot was significantly closer than the boys. This could also be translated as that girls regarded the robot as their close friends or family more than the boys. Similar results also applied when the participants interacted with the machine-like robot, Book Smile. The girls also stayed in closer distance with the robot than the boy.

To investigate whether the participants’ gender will affect their attitudes toward the robot, the result showed that participants’ attitude toward both robots was positive. And the girls had better comfort attitude to the robots than the boy. Additionally, although both gender were willing to make friend with a robot of emotions, the results showed that the girl (M = 4.71, S.D. = 1.37) were more willing than the boy (M = 4.12, S.D. = 1.63). However, there was no significant difference between two groups of the participants in the comfort attitude part. In the feelings of the library tasks, the girls were more positive than the boys to have the robots recommended readings. In addition, girls perceived the conversations with robots as significantly more relevant than boys (t (76) = –3.44, p < .01).

The participants liked the robot with no human-like appearance, arms, and emotion. However, in the monitor and facial features parts, there were significant differences between the boys and the girls: girls liked the robot with monitor (M = 4.60, S.D. = 1.94) and facial features (M = 3.83, S.D. = 1.82) more than the boy felt about the monitor (M = 2.71, S.D. = 2.02) and the facial features (M = 2.71, S.D. = 1.95). The results showed that the boys had less positive attitude than the girls in all attitude parts. This may be the reason that the boys stayed farer than the girls when interacting with the robot (Table 4).

Table 4. Gender difference in attitudes toward robots
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To summarize, both gender and robot appearance would affect the personal space that the participants kept from the robot. Participants would interact with human-like robot in the intimate space (m < 0.45) despite of the robot’s gender. On the other hand, when interacting, the participants would stay in a farther space (personal space, m < 1.2) with machine-like robot. The results regarding gender difference supported findings of the previous studies [7, 8], and proved that participants perceived a same-gender robot more positive and psychologically close than the opposite-gender robot.

4 Conclusion

This study has discussed the personal space and the attitude in interaction between child patrons and robots under different contexts. It was established by analyzing the distance, video, and questionnaire data of the child patrons’ attitude and the behaviors. The results showed that the child patrons were willing to interact with the robots for the book recommending services. Also, they are willing to read the book with and from the robot. The appearances of the robots affected the interaction between the child patrons and the robot. When the participants interacted with the human-like robot, they tended to interact in intimate space; on the other hand, the participant who interacted with the machine-like robot would prefer to interact in personal space.

The results also suggested gender differences in the child patrons’ interaction with the robots. The personal space that the girls interacted with the robot was closer than the boys. And the attitude that the girls had to the robot was also more positive than the boy. That is to say that the robots’ appearance and the child patrons’ gender factor would affect the personal space that the child patrons and the robot interacted with.

The study was distinct from previous studies of HRI space [9, 10] by its context-specific research design. With the direct and automatic measurement of the distance, bias and ambiguity could be avoided. And the personal space was examined in the real world, where the library context, robot instruments and interaction were all genuine, the findings contributed to provide empirical evidence for the research and practices of the field.

This study started from Taiwan to establish one aspect of the child patrons’ personal space in the library with the robot. The results showed that the gender and the robots’ appearance do affect the personal space; also the gender would affect the attitude that the child patrons have. This may be the reference for the library to conduct the robot service and its content. However, it should be noted that the study was limited by the participants’ background. In this study, the participants were all the students from Taiwan, where the students may feel less familiar than other countries that develop robots maturely. As Bartneck [11] indicated, the cultural background had a significant influence on people’s attitude to robots. Hence, the opinions and the personal space of the robot may be different when the experiment is conducted in other countries. Yet, the study’s results are still the good references when the library is considering introducing the robot service in the future.