HelloBot: Facilitating Social Inclusion with an Interactive Greeting Robot

Abstract

Smiling and saying hello to people can possibly increase social inclusion or belongingness, which is one of the basic needs of human. We present HelloBot, a social robot that proactively gives greetings to passersby and reacts to their smiles to induce positive feelings. We performed an in-the-wild trial to evaluate the emotional effect of interacting with HelloBot. We observed 123 students and 32 answered the accompanying questionnaire. 92 of 123 participants made a natural laugh or smile. 50%(N=16) of participants reported that they felt better after interacting with HelloBot. Our results show that interactive social greeting bots have the potential to induce social inclusion and positive feelings.