2011 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots
Bled, Slovenia, October 26-28, 2011
Robot as Teammate vs. Opponent in Video Gaming
Eunil Park
Sonya S. Kwak
Department of Interaction Science
Sungkyunkwan University
Seoul, South Korea
[email protected]
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences
POSTECH
Pohang, South Korea
[email protected]
Ki Joon Kim
Angel P. del Pobil
Department of Interaction Science
Robotic Intelligence Lab. - Dept. of Interaction Science
Sungkyunkwan University
University Jaume-I - Sungkyunkwan University
Seoul, South Korea
Castello, Spain - Seoul, South Korea
[email protected]
[email protected]
The study will have a main test subject with another individual, then have a robot as well
Abstract—Can playing a video game with a robot be more
enjoyable than playing with a human? Should a robot be my
teammate or opponent when playing a video game? Will the
gaming result affect how I feel about my gaming partner? To
address these questions, the present study conducted a 2 (playing
game with: human vs. robot) x 2 (played game as: teammate vs.
opponent) x 2 (result of game: win vs. lose) between subject
experiment to examine the role of a robot in video gaming and
psychology of human players associated with it. Results showed
that playing a video game was more enjoyable when played with
a human player, while playing the game with a robot player was
perceived to be easier. Robot player’s role as teammate vs.
opponent and the result of the game (win vs. lose) did not have
psychological effects on participants.
II.
A. Robot vs. Human
In communication with robot or human, people estimate the
ability of robot or human. Compared between human-like robot
and machine-like robot, people feel that human-like robot is
more familiar than robot-like robot. For instance, people want
to interact more with human-like robot compared to pet-like
robot. Related to our works, people want to do shared tasks
with human, because people are likely to be more confident in
his estimates of the ability of robot. Therefore, when people
work with robot on specific tasks, they will rely or trust more
human as compared to robots. The present study was
conducted to explore the effects of type of colleague or
opponent on psychology of participants by examining
following research question (RQ):
Keywords-robot; teammate; opponent; sharing; HRI;
I.
INTRODUCTION
RQ: For participants, controlling for shared tasks, what
is the relationship between the type of colleague or
opponent (IV) and attribute toward shared tasks,
enjoyment of shared tasks, intention to do shared tasks,
perceived ease of doing shared tasks, and perceived
intelligence to colleague or opponent (DVs)?
Since 1940s, researchers have founded and improved the
possibility of interaction between human and robot. With this
flow, Breazeal [1] classified the detailed field of Human-Robot
Interaction as four aspects of interaction which were robot as
tool, robot as cyborg extension, robot as avatar, and robot as
sociable partner. For the purposes of this paper with viewpoints
of sociable partner, it was essential that social robot have to
serve functions of communication. We found many and various
attempts with focusing on human-robot interaction with some
characteristics of communications. That is, basic
communicative functions are essential like talking and listening.
With improvements of robotics and computer engineering, we
have built and found socially robots which have various
functions such as talking, moving, grasping, and so on.
B. Perception to Robot’s Role
As mentioned above, in these days, robots can do various
roles in our society. With the purpose of our work, we were
able to find previous research which focused on educational
and entertaining robots. In our workplace, a robot was used as
guiding or assistant robot. In order to perform these roles, it is
essential to have functions of mobility and communication. For
example, Jijo-2 was used in office which was designed for
visitor. It was equipped functions of services such as guidance
for visitor and verbal communication with humans [13-15].
Additionally, we have found various shapes of sociable
robots such as pet-like shapes [2-8], human-like shapes [9-11],
or machine-like shapes [12]. With these supports and
background of initial interactive functions, then, socially
interactive robots can take some social roles as partners or
rivals. However, few studies focused on a kind of social robot’s
roles in our society. Therefore, in this paper, we want to see a
possibility of companion which is a entertain robot.
In addition, entertainment robots have been used for
elementary schools or kindergartens. Some service robots focus
on educational situation to provide instructors and training in
specific kinds of classes such as second language learning [16,
17].
This study was supported by a grant from the World-Class University
program (R31-2008-000-10062-0) of the Korean Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology via the National Research Foundation.
978-1-61284-868-6/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
LITERATURE REVIEW
People compare how people are to robots all the time
47
Responded for increasing number of entertainment robots,
there were some attempts to analyze human-robot interaction
when a person interacts with robots. For example, Lee and his
colleague studied the relationship between human and robot
which used a pet-like robot which is called AIBO [18] by using
‘Presence Theory’ [19, 20]. However, few studies focused on
the evaluation of robots as their colleagues or rivals when a
person works with robots [21-23].
eliminate potential gender effects. The individual participants
were received about US $3 for their participation.
B. Stimuli and Apparatus
The experiment was conducted in a bright and soundattenuated room. A large monitor screen (Resolution: 1,024 ×
768 with real size of 117 cm × 90cm) was placed on 3 meters
from the sitting participant in comfortable sofa. The monitoring
of a participant’s responses and the process of video game were
controlled by a Pentium computer.
There are relationships such as friend, rival, or companion
[1, 21, 24]. In these relationships, we are able to evaluate our
relationship. Mainly, these evaluations are based on
performance of our opponents of relationships. However,
although a friend has a same ability to do something, role of the
friend may affect the performance evaluation of individual. For
example, the evaluation between an absolute grading and
relative grading can be different.
Participants were able to control and play video game by
using a keyboard which was connected with the Pentium
computer. The keyboard settings were set to the video game
standard. We chose “Pro Evaluation Soccer 6” from KONAMI
as our video game, because we were able to control the role of
opponent and find proper reactions in robot and computer
based on real or virtual soccer games easily.
In response to the lack of existing literature, the present
study was conducted to explore the effects of robots’ role on
psychology of participants by examining the following RQ:
RQ: For participants, controlling for shared tasks, what
is the relationship between the roles of robot (IV) and
attribute toward shared tasks, enjoyment of shared
tasks, intention to do shared tasks, perceived ease of
doing shared tasks, and perceived intelligence to
colleague or opponent (DVs)?
C. Effects of Shared Tasks’ Result
Perceived enjoyment of player is one of most important
goal in shared tasks. If players do not feel enjoyment in the
tasks, a level of efficiency or achievement will be dropped [23].
That is, enjoyment is a main key factor of doing tasks.
Specially, enjoyment is strongly related to the result of tasks
such as video-game or sports game. Therefore, related to our
works, the result of tasks is able to affect enjoyment or attribute
toward shared tasks. Therefore, the present study was
conducted to explore the effects of type of colleague or
opponent on psychology of participants by examining
following research question (RQ):
Figure 1. A scene of 'Pro Evolution Soccer 6'.
RQ: For participants, controlling for shared tasks, what
is the relationship between the results of shared tasks
(IV) and attribute toward shared tasks, enjoyment of
shared tasks, intention to do shared tasks, perceived
ease of doing shared tasks, and perceived intelligence
to colleague or opponent (DVs)?
III.
STUDY DESIGN
The experiment was a between-subjects design with eight
conditions: 2 (Opponent Type: Human Player vs. Robot Player)
x 2 (Role of Opponent: Partner vs. Enemy) x 2 (Result of
video-game: Win vs. Lose).
A. Participants
Participants were 60 undergraduate and graduate students
(all female, average age of 24.2 with standard deviation of 3.3).
All participants did not have a previous experience in our game
or similar game. Due to characteristics of video game, the
present study recruited only female participants in order to
Figure 2. Human player versus participant.
C. Procedure
Upon arrival at the laboratory, participants were assigned to
one of the eight conditions based on the order they registered
through the online signup page. To eliminate the effect of
48
adaptation for video game, each participant did a practice game
about five minutes after reading an instruction which explained
functions of keys. Then, they were instructed with a demo.
They were asked to use all keys to know exact functions of
each key in video game. To help efficient controlling by using
the keyboard, we used a training stage of video game. In this
stage, participants were able to control their team against only a
goalkeeper as enemy team.
al.[25], Igbaria et al. [28], and Koufaris [29]. Intention to play
game was an index composed of five items adapted from
Agarwal and Karahanna [30], Wu [27], and Kim et al. [31] to
examine perceived intention to play video game.
An index composed of five items measuring perceived
intelligence to opponent was administered in order to evaluate
partner or enemy from Bartneck et al. [32]. Lastly, perceived
ease of use was an index composed of four items adapted from
Kim et al. [31].
Then, they started main tasks: before tasks, their colleague
or enemy (human or robot) sat down on a sofa nearby
participants. In human condition, we used a person who was an
expert of this video game for controlling the level of difficulty.
In robot condition, Nao Robot sat down on a sofa instead of the
person. The robot said identical reactions or gestures compared
to the human-player by controlling the instructor, because the
voice-files and gestures were recorded from the person of
human-condition. However, above-mentioned expert played
the video game in two-mirrored room.
TABLE I.
Reliability of Questionnaire Items
Participants were instructed to do their best as possible.
After the end of video game was over, participants were asked
to fill out an online post-experiment questionnaire, which
included items on their assessments. All participants were then
debriefed and thanked at the end of the experiment.
D. Measures
The measures primarily used validated items from prior
research, and participants responded to each item by marking
on a 7-point Likert scale (1=“strongly disagree,” 7=“strongly
disagree”). Attitude toward video-game was an index
composed of five items adapted from A. Lin et al. [25],
Agarwal and Prasad [26], and Wu [27]. Enjoyment of playing
video game was an index composed of eight items to measure
perceived enjoyment of video-game adapted from A. Lin et
TABLE II.
Player type
Role of
player
RELIABILITY OF MEASUREMENTS
Variables
Cronbach’s alpha
Attribute toward video-game (AV)
.71
Enjoyment of playing video-game (EPV)
.81
Intention to play video-game (IPV)
.71
Perceived intelligence to opponent (PIO)
.73
Perceived ease of playing video-game (PEPV)
.64
E. Result
1) Reliability: Cronbach’s alphas were calculated to
evaluate the internal consistency of the questionnaire items
used in the present study. As summarized in Table 1,
Cronbachs’ alphas for the dependent variables indicated that
the questionnaire items did have an acceptable reliability.
DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF OUR EXPERIMENT
Result of
video Game
Attribute toward
video game
Enjoyment of
playing video
game
Intention to play
video game
Perceived
intelligence to
opponent
Perceived ease of
playing video
game
Lose
5.14 (0.78)
4.86 (1.03)
4.86 (1.03)
5.51 (0.68)
3.75 (0.76)
Win
5.58 (0.36)
5.20 (0.33)
5.10 (0.34)
5.80 (0.24)
3.97 (0.57)
Lose
5.65 (1.11)
5.64 (1.02)
4.58 (1.44)
5.68 (0.76)
3.91 (0.92)
Win
5.74 (0.56)
5.80 (0.53)
5.46 (0.75)
5.77 (0.56)
3.68 (0.47)
Lose
5.43 (0.95)
4.82 (1.02)
4.00 (1.40)
5.69 (1.29)
4.89 (1.64)
Win
5.88 (0.82)
4.84 (0.73)
4.10 (0.61)
4.90 (0.87)
5.09 (0.91)
Lose
5.74 (0.51)
4.52 (0.32)
4.46 (0.55)
5.71 (0.74)
5.36 (0.48)
Win
5.88 (0.82)
4.61 (0.45)
3.75 (0.81)
4.93 (0.41)
5.00 (0.69)
5.51 (0.75)
4.70 (0.66)
4.53 (1.04)
5.49 (0.78)
4.46 (1.04)
Opponent
Human
Player
Team
Opponent
Robot
Team
Average
49
2) Descriptive Analysis: Table 2 is mean and standard
deviation of all conditions.
6) Interaction between Players’ Type and Roles: The
interaction between the players’ type and role had an effect on
enjoyment of playing video-game (F(1, 52) = 6.35, MSe =
3.45, p = .015), such that playing the video game with the
human player teammate was more enjoyable than playing with
the human opponent while playing with the robot player
showed no difference due to the player’s role.
3) Effects of Player Type (Human vs. Robot): A
multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to analyze the
effects of opponents’ type on participants’ reported level of
enjoyment of playing video-game, and intention to play videogame. The results from the multivariate ANOVA indicated
that participants who played with human player (M = 5.38, SD
= .83) reported a higher level of enjoyment than robot player
(M = 4.70, SD = .66) did, F(1, 52) = 12.65, MSe = 6.87, p
= .001. Participants who played with human player (M = 4.99,
SD = .99) reported that they were more likely to play this
video-game in future than participants with robot player (M =
4.07, SD = .88), F(1, 52) = 14.38, MSe = 12.65, p <.001.
The opponents’ type also had effects on perceived
intelligence to opponent, and ease of playing video-game;
participants who played with human player (M = 5.69, SD
= .57) reported marginally that they felt more intelligent to
opponent than participants who played with robot player (M =
5.28, SD = .92), F(1, 52) = 3.98, MSe = 2.20, p = .051.
However, participants who played with robot player (M = 5.08,
SD = .97) reported a significantly higher degree of perceived
ease of playing video-game than participants who played with
human player (M = 3.83, SD = .68), F(1, 52) = 31.14, MSe =
23.71, p <.001.
7) Interaction between Players’ Type and Result of Videogame: The interaction between the players’ type and result of
video-game had an effect on perceived intelligence of
opponent (F(1, 52) = 6.46, MSe = 3.58, p = .014), such that
participants who were defeated with or from robot player felt a
higher degree of intelligent of opponent than participants who
won with or from robot player while participants who played
with human player showed no difference due to result of
video-game.
Figure 4. Mean and standard error of enjoyment of playing video game.
Figure 3. Mean and standard error based on opponents' type.
4) Effects of Role of Player (Teammate vs. Opponent): A
multivariate analysis of variance did not find a notable main
effect of opponents’ role on the dependent variables, including
attribute toward video-game (p = .93), enjoyment of playing
video-game (p = .27), intention to play video-game (p = .85),
perceived intelligence to opponent (p = .81), and perceived
ease of playing video-game (p = .79).
Figure 5. Mean and standard error of
perceived intelligence of their teammate or opponent.
5) Effects of Video-Game Result (Win vs. Lose): A
multivariate analysis of variance did not find a notable main
effect of result of video-game on the dependent variables,
including attribute toward video-game (p = .81), enjoyment of
playing video-game (p = .42), intention to play video-game (p
= .60), perceived intelligence to opponent (p = .13), and
perceived ease of playing video-game (p = .86).
8) Interaction between Players’ Role and Result of Videogame: The interaction between the players’ role and result of
video-game had an effect on attribute toward video-game (F(1,
52) = 4.39, MSe = 2.33, p = .041), such that participants who
were defeated with an opponent as colleague felt a lower
degree of attribute toward video-game than participants who
were defeated with the opponent as enemy while participants
50
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who won with the opponent as colleague felt a higher degree
of attribute toward video-game than participants who were
won with the opponent as enemy.
Figure 6. Mean and standard error of attribute toward video game.
IV.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Our findings provide valuable insights for interaction
between human and robot in shared tasks such as playing video
games and other collaborative works. The present study
explored whether playing a video game with a robot vs. human
yields similar or different psychological evaluations of the
gaming partner. Results from our between-subject experiment
showed that playing a video game was more enjoyable when
played with a human player, and participants thought the
human player was more intelligent than the robot player.
Playing with the robot, however, was perceived to be easier,
indicating that robots may take a role as a gaming parter
although we acknowledge that robots are not as intelligent and
competent as human players. Our results also revealed that
robot player’s role as teammate vs. opponent and the result of
the game (win vs. lose) did not have psychological effects on
participants.
Interestingly, playing the video game with the human
teammate was more enjoyable than playing with the human
opponent while playing with the robot player showed no
difference due to the player’s role. This may suggests that our
“teamwork”cognitive structure automatically acknowledges humans’ role
as teammate or competitor, and give positive credits to the one
who collaborate and work as a team. Robots, on the other
hands, are typically designed and viewed as human assistants
and companions rather than competitors, and participants in the
present study, therefore, might have not been affected by the
role differentiation.
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