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

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Human-Computer Interaction (HCII 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14685))

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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.

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Acknowledgment

This paper is funded by the National Science and Technology Council, R.O.C. Taiwan (NSTC112–2410-H-006–075-).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Design, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan City, Taiwan (R.O.C.)

    Kunlin Jhang & Wei-Chi Chien

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  1. Kunlin Jhang
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  2. Wei-Chi Chien
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Correspondence to Wei-Chi Chien .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Open University of Japan, Chiba, Japan

    Masaaki Kurosu

  2. Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan

    Ayako Hashizume

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Jhang, K., Chien, WC. (2024). A Telepresence Robot Partner for Remote Work: An Exploration into Design and Its Psychological Effect. In: Kurosu, M., Hashizume, A. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction. HCII 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14685. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60412-6_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60412-6_8

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-60412-6

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