The Nature Of The Bots: How People Respond To Robots, Virtual Agents And Humans As Multimodal Stimuli

This research agenda aims to understand how people treat robots along two dialectics. In the mechanical-living dialectic, fabricated entities are assessed against their organic counterparts to see if people respond differently to robots versus other people. Multiple experiments are conducted that compare human-robot relationships to human-human relationships by manipulating roles in videos of dyadic conversations shown to participants. In the physical-digital dialectic, a physically embodied robotic agent is compared to either a digitally-presented virtual agent (such as an animated character on a computer screen) or a digitally-presented robotic agent (such as a live video feed of the robot). The role of physical and digital embodiment and display medium are explored through a comprehensive survey and analysis of existing experimental works comparing physical and digital agents. Key research questions, related work, scope, research approach, current findings and remaining work are outlined.