Effectiveness of robot exhibition through visitors experience: A case study of Nagoya Science Hiroba exhibition in Japan

This study presents an additional investigation of effectiveness of robot exhibition through visitors experience, with respect to the previous research which was performed in the robot museum in South Korea. The survey research was performed in the temporal robot exhibition in Nagoya Science Hiroba 2016, Japan, targeting the local citizen who are most of the visitors of the exhibition. Sociability, social attraction and negative attitude toward robots were measured to analyze change of the perception about robots through visiting experience. The results showed that sociability and social attraction were significantly changed after experiencing robot exhibitions. However, the negative attitude showed no significant change. It was confirmed that sociability was changed through the visiting experience similar to the robot museum case. However, the social attraction was a significantly increased, and the negative attitude had no significant change, different with the result in the robot museum. It is supposed that since the robot exhibition provided much communicative opportunities to the visitors than the robot museum, the social attraction showed a significant change rather than the robot museum. Also, it is assumed that the cultural aspect in Japan, where robot is widely exposed to the public at present, affected no significant perceptual change on the negative attitude towards general robots.