My Familiar Robot Companion: Preferences and Perceptions of CHARLY, a Companion Humanoid Autonomous Robot for Living with You

This paper presents findings from a survey conducted with visitors to the My Familiar Companion exhibit, part of the HUMAN+ Exhibition at the Science Gallery in Dublin. The exhibit consisted of a humanoid robot, CHARLY (Companion Humanoid Autonomous Robot for Living with You) with a head with a back projected morphing composite face derived from nearby people. Visitors answered a computer-based questionnaire to gain their perceptions and opinions of the exhibit, and also their preferences for a robot that they would like to have in their own home. The main findings indicated that most respondents would not want a very human-like robot, but most would prefer to own a robot with some human-like attributes and capabilities. A principle component analyses indicated that people perceive two main factors when rating their preferences for their preferred robots, Physical Similarity and Expressive Similarity. Both these derived factors correlate strongly to their ratings for Human-likeness versus Machine-likeness. It was found that slightly more male than female respondents were more likely to relate to their own robot as a colleague, though overall, most respondents would relate to their own robot as a servant or tool.