The Effect of Tactility and Socio-relational Context on Social Presence and User Satisfaction

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of socio-relational context and robot's tactility on the sense of social presence and user satisfaction. We executed a 2(socio-relational context: an intimate remote sender vs. a non-intimate remote sender) x 2(tactility: anthropomorphic tactility vs. non-anthropomorphic tactility) within-participants experiment (N=24). As result, participants felt a stronger sense of a remote sender's presence when the remote sender was an intimate person than a non-intimate person, and felt a greater sense of a remote sender's presence when a robot had an anthropomorphic tactility than when a robot had a non-anthropomorphic tactility. In addition, participants preferred a telepresence robot with an anthropomorphic tactility in the context that they interacted with an intimate person, whereas a telepresence robot with a non-anthropomorphic tactility was preferred in the context that they interact with a non-intimate person in robot-mediated communication.