392266 ISY Project: Hey, don’t do that! Studying the persuasiveness of social robots (Pj) (SoSe 2020)

Social robots can function as salient cues guiding people act in the environment and providing information. For example, robots can be used to inform people about dangerous situations like crossing streets or train tracks when using smartphones or listening to music. Though, robots are not yet perceived as authoritative or competent actors and thus often ignored by people. When robots are deployed to guide the behavior of people, the robot's information can conflict with peoples' own beliefs and could create a dissonant feeling.
This Human-Robot Interaction project is based upon a collaboration with Kyoto University and studies phenomena of cultural psychology, social power/persuasiveness and the Theory of Dissonance. The goal of this project is to deploy a social robot (i.e., Pepper) in a public space that approaches people in above mentioned situations and tries to influence them to change their behavior. Part of the project will be the development of cultural persuasive strategies based on the interdependent and independent cultural aspects of Japanese and German societies and testing of the social power of these strategies with German pedestrians.

In case this would not find enough interest for a team project, this project proposal would be also offered (in reduced/modified form)
[x] as individual project
[x] as project for 2-3 students