Effects of Social Behaviors of Robots in Privacy-Sensitive Situations

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effect of robot social behaviors in privacy-sensitive situations that are designed to reduce concerns of users regarding privacy invasion. As social robots ought to spend considerable time with humans, there has been research on user privacy protection. However, previous work mostly focuses on technical approaches not to disclose private information such as video/audio recordings and personally identifiable information. Although social robots could protect the privacy of users using those technologies, the users may still feel uncomfortable if they do not notice such the protection techniques being held. We design and test several behaviors of a social robot that can help users understand the internal process of the robot protecting user privacy so that users could have less concerns about their privacy. We choose three categories for the behavior design based on previous studies in psychology and human-robot interaction. They are (i) the gaze of the robot, (ii) the distance between the robot and a user, and (iii) clarity in expressing intent of the robot. In each category, we design and test three behaviors including a baseline (default) behavior. We conduct user studies with 56 participants in two scenarios to find effective behaviors. In the two scenarios, participants are asked to change clothes and write personal information in the presence of the robot in the vicinity, respectively. From the result, we find that users feel more comfortable in privacy-sensitive situations if they observe the robot perfor-ming the behaviors respecting user privacy. The most effective behavior of the robot is shown to be turning around from the user and showing robot's back. As the robot combines more behaviors (such as telling the user that video recording is suspended, moving away from the user, and then turning around), the concern of users tends to decrease.