• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.95-113
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• 2024

Purpose: This study focused on the societal changes associated with the entry into an ultra-aged society and the increase in single-person households. The core objective of this research is to investigate how social intelligent robots can bring about positive changes in the lives of individuals in single-person households and how such changes influence user satisfaction and the intention to use these robots. Methods: The study employed a cross-sectional analysis using a structural equation model. A survey designed to assess the impact of social intelligent robots' characteristics, such as perceived encouragement, empathy, presence, appearance, and attachment, on user satisfaction and usage intentions was conducted. Data were collected from a total of 335 users and analyzed using the structural equation model. Results: In the characteristics of social intelligent robots for single-person households, it was found that empathy, presence, and attachment significantly influenced satisfaction, while perceived encouragement, empathy, and attachment significantly influenced usage intentions. The research results indicate differences between enhancing user satisfaction and increasing the intention to use social intelligent robots. The findings suggest the essential need for a user-centric approach in the design and development of social intelligent robots. Additionally, it was observed that emotional support plays a crucial role in users' experiences with social intelligent robots. Conclusion: This study verified the impact of social intelligent robots on satisfaction and usage intentions based on users' experiences. It examined the influence of linguistic, visual, and personal characteristics of robots on user experiences, providing insights into how technological and human aspects of social intelligent robots interact to shape user satisfaction and usage intentions. Consequently, the study confirmed that social intelligent robots can bring positive changes to human life, emphasizing the necessity for the advancement of robot technology in a human-centric direction.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.5594-5615
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• 2019

Malicious social robots, which are disseminators of malicious information on social networks, seriously affect information security and network environments. The detection of malicious social robots is a hot topic and a significant concern for researchers. A method based on classification has been widely used for social robot detection. However, this method of classification is limited by an unbalanced data set in which legitimate, negative samples outnumber malicious robots (positive samples), which leads to unsatisfactory detection results. This paper proposes the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to extend the unbalanced data sets before training classifiers to improve the detection of social robots. Five popular oversampling algorithms were compared in the experiments, and the effects of imbalance degree and the expansion ratio of the original data on oversampling were studied. The experimental results showed that the proposed method achieved better detection performance compared with other algorithms in terms of the F1 measure. The GAN method also performed well when the imbalance degree was smaller than 15%.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.129-149
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• 2021

Recently, interest in social robots that can socially interact with humans is increasing. Thanks to the development of ICT technology, social robots have become easier to provide personalized services and emotional connection to individuals, and the role of social robots is drawing attention as a means to solve modern social problems and the resulting decline in the quality of individual lives. Along with the interest in social robots, the spread of social robots is also increasing significantly. Many companies are introducing robot products to the market to target various target markets, but so far there is no clear trend leading the market. Accordingly, there are more and more attempts to differentiate robots through the design of social robots. In particular, anthropomorphism has been studied importantly in social robot design, and many approaches have been attempted to anthropomorphize social robots to produce positive effects. However, there is a lack of research that systematically describes the mechanism by which anthropomorphism for social robots is formed. Most of the existing studies have focused on verifying the positive effects of the anthropomorphism of social robots on consumers. In addition, the formation of anthropomorphism of social robots may vary depending on the individual's motivation or temperament, but there are not many studies examining this. A vague understanding of anthropomorphism makes it difficult to derive design optimal points for shaping the anthropomorphism of social robots. The purpose of this study is to verify the mechanism by which the anthropomorphism of social robots is formed. This study confirmed the effect of the human-likeness of social robots(Within-subjects) and the construal level of consumers(Between-subjects) on the formation of anthropomorphism through an experimental study of 3×2 mixed design. Research hypotheses on the mechanism by which anthropomorphism is formed were presented, and the hypotheses were verified by analyzing data from a sample of 206 people. The first hypothesis in this study is that the higher the human-likeness of the robot, the higher the level of anthropomorphism for the robot. Hypothesis 1 was supported by a one-way repeated measures ANOVA and a post hoc test. The second hypothesis in this study is that depending on the construal level of consumers, the effect of human-likeness on the level of anthropomorphism will be different. First, this study predicts that the difference in the level of anthropomorphism as human-likeness increases will be greater under high construal condition than under low construal condition.Second, If the robot has no human-likeness, there will be no difference in the level of anthropomorphism according to the construal level. Thirdly,If the robot has low human-likeness, the low construal level condition will make the robot more anthropomorphic than the high construal level condition. Finally, If the robot has high human-likeness, the high construal levelcondition will make the robot more anthropomorphic than the low construal level condition. We performed two-way repeated measures ANOVA to test these hypotheses, and confirmed that the interaction effect of human-likeness and construal level was significant. Further analysis to specifically confirm interaction effect has also provided results in support of our hypotheses. The analysis shows that the human-likeness of the robot increases the level of anthropomorphism of social robots, and the effect of human-likeness on anthropomorphism varies depending on the construal level of consumers. This study has implications in that it explains the mechanism by which anthropomorphism is formed by considering the human-likeness, which is the design attribute of social robots, and the construal level of consumers, which is the way of thinking of individuals. We expect to use the findings of this study as the basis for design optimization for the formation of anthropomorphism in social robots.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.861-870
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• 2017

In this paper, we propose the roles of social robots in educational environments. This proposal becomes an extension of R-learning. The purpose of social robots is the communication and interaction with human. Social robots have two roles. One is similar to the role of educational service robot and the other is communication role with people in education environments. We make an scenario to explain how to operate the roles of social robots using robot jibo SDK. The scenario was designed for mild interaction with the user in the educational environment. And it was made using jibo animation part to control the external reaction of jibo and behaviors part to control the internal reaction in jibo SDK. Social robots collect data effectively, based on grafting technologies and interaction with people in educational environments. Concludingly, various data collected by social robots contribute to solving problems, developing and establishing of educational environments.

• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.34-44
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• 2020

This paper examines the trends of recently developed human-care robots and social interaction technologies. As one of the solutions to the problems of an aging society, human-care robots have gained considerable attention from the public and the market. However, commercialized human-care robots do not meet user expectations for the role as companions. Current robot services based on short-term interaction and fragmentary pieces of intelligence have encountered difficulty in eliciting natural communication with humans. This results in the failure of human-robot social bonding. Social interaction is being actively investigated as a technique for improving robots' natural communication skills. Robots can form a natural bond with humans through social interaction, which consequently increases their effectiveness. In this paper, we introduce recent human-care robot-related issues and subsequently describe technical challenges and implications for the success of human-care robots. In addition, we review recent trends on social interaction technologies and the datasets required.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.868-880
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• 2023

This study is a qualitative study conducted to analyze the functions and needs of social robots for parents of children with developmental disabilities in order to utilize care robots for treatment of children with developmental disabilities. The subjects of the study were 11 primary caregivers with children under the age of 18 whose children were diagnosed with developmental disabilities or who had been receiving special education for more than one year. The interview questionnaire was composed of a semi-structured questionnaire and consisted of awareness, necessity, expectation, concern, and other opinions about social robots. The interview was conducted as a non-face-to-face online video interview due to COVID 19. As a result of the study, 4 themes and 7 sub-topics were derived. The four topics were derived from the unfamiliar but soon-to-be-faced reality, social robots with active functions, opinions on the appearance and materials of social robots, and concerns about social robots. Through this study, it was possible to identify the expectations and suggestions of the main caregivers for social robots, which could not be identified in quantitative studies, and if these can be reflected in social robots to be developed in the future, it is expected that positive results with higher acceptance will be derived.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.55-78
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• 2021

Tosolve complex and diverse social problems and ensure the quality of life of individuals, social robots that can interact with humans are attracting attention. In the past, robots were recognized as beings that provide labor force as they put into industrial sites on behalf of humans. However, the concept of today's robot has been extended to social robots that coexist with humans and enable social interaction with the advent of Smart technology, which is considered an important driver in most industries. Specifically, there are service robots that respond to customers, the robots that have the purpose of edutainment, and the emotionalrobots that can interact with humans intimately. However, popularization of robots is not felt despite the current information environment in the modern ICT service environment and the 4th industrial revolution. Considering social interaction with users which is an important function of social robots, not only the technology of the robots but also other factors should be considered. The design elements of the robot are more important than other factors tomake consumers purchase essentially a social robot. In fact, existing studies on social robots are at the level of proposing "robot development methodology" or testing the effects provided by social robots to users in pieces. On the other hand, consumer emotions felt from the robot's appearance has an important influence in the process of forming user's perception, reasoning, evaluation and expectation. Furthermore, it can affect attitude toward robots and good feeling and performance reasoning, etc. Therefore, this study aims to verify the effect of appearance of social robot and consumer emotions on consumer's attitude toward social robot. At this time, a social robot design evaluation model is constructed by combining heterogeneous data from different sources. Specifically, the three quantitative indicator data for the appearance of social robots from the ABOT Database is included in the model. The consumer emotions of social robot design has been collected through (1) the existing design evaluation literature and (2) online buzzsuch as product reviews and blogs, (3) qualitative interviews for social robot design. Later, we collected the score of consumer emotions and attitudes toward various social robots through a large-scale consumer survey. First, we have derived the six major dimensions of consumer emotions for 23 pieces of detailed emotions through dimension reduction methodology. Then, statistical analysis was performed to verify the effect of derived consumer emotionson attitude toward social robots. Finally, the moderated regression analysis was performed to verify the effect of quantitatively collected indicators of social robot appearance on the relationship between consumer emotions and attitudes toward social robots. Interestingly, several significant moderation effects were identified, these effects are visualized with two-way interaction effect to interpret them from multidisciplinary perspectives. This study has theoretical contributions from the perspective of empirically verifying all stages from technical properties to consumer's emotion and attitudes toward social robots by linking the data from heterogeneous sources. It has practical significance that the result helps to develop the design guidelines based on consumer emotions in the design stage of social robot development.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.349-355
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• 2020

Social robots are attracting attention as an alternative to social problems in modern society, and the need for modularization has been raised to efficiently manage various robots. The study aims to reestablish the concept of 'Personal social service robot' and propose a new modularization method to apply it. For this study, literature research about the definition of social robots and service robots is conducted. In addition, we investigated the modularization of robots and analyzed the modularization cases of service robots. Based on this, we have deducted considerations for applying social service robot modularization and proposed a new modularization. This study divided the module into active module and passive module according to whether it is electric or electronic component of the module, and the active module was again classified into basic module and additional module according to the basic and replacement type of the robot. The modularization was verified by making the prototype of the actual robot.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.10-16
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• 2009

This paper is concerned with Korean students' attitudes towards robots, presenting two survey studies. The first study was concerned with a group of college students, taking the perspective of international comparison. Data were collected by administering an online survey, where 106 volunteer students had participated. In the survey, the Negative Attitude towards Robot Scale(NARS) was adopted to compare the Korean students' scores with those of multi-national groups (U.S.A, Germany, Netherland, Japan, Mexico, and China) who responded to the same scale in Bartneck et al.'s research. The analysis of the data reveals that Korean students tend to be more concerned about social impacts that robots might bring to future society and are very conscious about the uncertain influences of robots on human life. The second study investigated factors that may affect K-12 students' attitudes towards robots, with survey data garnered from 298 elementary, middle, and high school students. The data were analyzed by the method of multiple regression analysis to test the hypothesis that a student's gender, age, the extent of interest in robots, and the extent of experiences with robots may influence his or her attitude towards robots. The hypothesis was partially supported in that variables of a student's gender, age, and the extent of interest in robots were statistically significant with regard to the attitude variable. Given the results, this paper suggests three points of discussions to better understand Korean students' attitudes towards robots: social and cultural context, individual differences, and theory of mind.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.573-579
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• 2006

Most of the recently developed robots are human friendly robots which imitate an animal or human such as entertainment robot, biomimetic robot and humanoid robot. Interest in these robots is increased because the social trend is focused on health, welfare, and graying. By these social backgrounds, robots become more human friendly and suitable or home or personal environment. The more biomimetic robots resemble living creature, the more human feels familiarity. Human feels close friendship not only when feeding a pet, but also when watching a pet having the food. Most of entertainment robots and pet robots use internal-type batteries and have a self-recharging function. Entertainment robots and pet robots with internal-type batteries are not able to operate during charging the battery. So far there have been a few robots that do not depend on an internal battery. However, they need a bulky energy conversion unit and a slug or foods as an energy source, which is not suitable for home or personal application. In this paper, we introduce a new biomimetic entertainment robot with autonomous eating functionality, called EPRO-1(Eating Pet RObot version 1). The EPRO-1 is able to eat a food (a small battery), by itself and evacuate. We describe the design concept of the autonomous eating mechanism of the EPRO-1, characteristics of sub-parts of the manufactured mechanism and its control system.