A Telepresence Robot Partner for Remote Work: An Exploration into Design and Its Psychological Effect

Kunlin Jhang, Wei Chi Chien

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly shifted the traditional workspace to the domestic environment. Social isolation inspires us to consider telepresence technologies to reshape our working experience. This study is inspired by the psychological concept of social facilitation and explores its implementation in telepresence robots. A telepresence robot representing somebody with minimal cues was designed and tested in our experiment on a puzzle task. We suspect a facilitative effect of the robot on the participants’ work efficiency and self-efficacy through its social presence. To evaluate the design, different modalities of the “observer” were set up as different experiment conditions. The initial result shows no significant social facilitation effect. However, this study contributes to the ongoing debate on the effectiveness of robots in remote work environments.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHuman-Computer Interaction - Thematic Area, HCI 2024, Held as Part of the 26th HCI International Conference, HCII 2024, Proceedings
EditorsMasaaki Kurosu, Ayako Hashizume
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages105-115
Number of pages11
ISBN (Print)9783031604119
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
EventHuman Computer Interaction thematic area of the 26th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2024 - Washington, United States
Duration: 2024 Jun 292024 Jul 4

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume14685 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

ConferenceHuman Computer Interaction thematic area of the 26th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2024
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityWashington
Period24-06-2924-07-04

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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