A great deal of research has been performed recently on robots that feature functions for communicating with humans in daily life, i.e., communication robots. We consider it important to develop methods to measure humans’ attitudes and emotions that may prevent them from interaction with communication robots, as indices to study short-term and long-term interaction between humans and communication robots. This study is aimed at exploring the influence of negative attitudes toward robots, focusing on applications of communication robots to daily-life services. (...) First, a scale of negative attitudes toward robots consisting of three subordinate scales, “negative attitudes toward situations of interaction with robots,” “negative attitudes toward the social influence of robots,” and “negative attitudes toward emotions in interaction with robots,” was developed based on a data sample comprising of 263 Japanese university students. This scale was administered to 240 Japanese university students to confirm its validity and reliability. In this paper, we report on the results of analyses of these data samples. Moreover, we discuss some future problems including a comparison of attitudes toward robots between nations. (shrink)

In order to investigate the influence of participants’ age on their image of robots in Japan, a pilot research was completed by 371 visitors at a robot exhibition held at a commercial facility in Japan, based on the questionnaire consisting of four open-ended questions. The comparison of younger, adult, and elderly groups, found that: in the younger age group, images of robots are ambiguous about near future assumptions, preferences, and antipathy, the adult group assumes that communication robots will appear in (...) the near future, but actually expects robots to function in non-communication tasks such as household duties and dangerous tasks, and experiences great anxiety and fear about social relationships between robots and humans, the elderly group assumes that both communication and non-communication robots will appear in the near future, but actually expects robots to function in communication tasks such as service in public settings and providing care at home or in welfare facilities, and is very concerned about the physical and ecological damage that robots may cause. Although the pilot study had a problem of sample bias on participant selection and distributions of gender and age, it can lead to some predictions on social acceptance of robots in Japan. Keywords: Robots, images, age differences, social research. (shrink)