Re-embodiment and co-embodiment: Exploration of social presence for robots and conversational agents

June 2019

Re-embodiment and co-embodiment: Exploration of social presence for robots and conversational agents

Authors:

Michal Luria, Samantha Reig, Xiang Zhi Tan, Aaron Steinfeld, Jodi Forlizzi, and John Zimmerman

Abstract:

Interactions with multiple conversational agents and social robots are becoming increasingly common. This raises new design challenges: Should agents and robots be modeled after humans, presenting their entity (i.e., social presence) as bound to a single body, or should they take advantage of non-human capabilities, such as moving their social presence from body to body across service touchpoints and contexts? We conducted a User Enactments study in which participants interacted with agents that had one social presence per body, that could re-embody (move their social presence from body to body), and that could co-embody (move their social presence into a body that already contains another). Reactions showed that participants felt comfortable with re-embodying agents, who created more seamless and efficient experiences. Yet situations that required expertise or concentration raised concerns about non-human behaviors. We report on our insights regarding collaboration and coordination with several agents in multi-step interactions.
@conference{Luria-2019-121248,
author = {Michal Luria And Samantha Reig And Xiang Zhi Tan And Aaron Steinfeld And Jodi Forlizzi And John Zimmerman},
title = {Re-embodiment and co-embodiment: Exploration of social presence for robots and conversational agents},
booktitle = {Proceedings of ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '19)},
year = {2019},
month = {June},
pages = {633 - 644},
}
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