Cross-Cultural Studies on Subjective Evaluation of a Seal Robot

Subjective evaluation of a seal robot was conducted in exhibitions that were held in seven different countries: Japan, the UK, Sweden, Italy, South Korea, Brunei and the US. Surveys were administered to the visitors after interaction with the robot. To explore the differences among people's evaluations of the robot in the seven countries, statistical analysis was conducted in the data set obtained from over 1400 respondents. The subjective evaluation provided high scores on the whole, and the factors 'comfortable feeling like interacting with real animals' and 'favorable impression to encourage interaction' were extracted. The results showed that people in the UK, Sweden and Italy evaluated the robot highly in the first factor, and people in Japan and South Korea evaluated it highly in the second factor. We considered that the subjective evaluation of the seal robot was influenced by cultural differences of relationships with animals. (c) Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden and The Robotics Society of Japan, 2009