Investigating Trustworthy Social Robots at the University Campus
Abstract
Social robots are making their way into different everyday use cases. Their adoption depends on getting many factors right. In this paper, we investigate the obstacles we might face when introducing social robots on the campus. In particular, we focus on trust, which is a crucial requirement between robots and humans. We collected data using questionnaires and interviews, and our analysis yields a set of factors of users' trust that may affect the future adoption of social robots, a set of use-cases for social robots on campus and their associated user expectations. Adapting an established model of trust, we highlight operational and operator transparency as keys for gaining users' trust in on-campus social robots. Our work contributes to the literature by providing practical considerations for setting up social robots for success on campuses.
Introduction
Social robots have gained increasing attention for their potential applications in various domains, such as education, hospitality, and healthcare. Early explorations have demonstrated the utility of social robots on the campus for information and guidance. However, a lack of guidance leads to a mismatch between the users' expectations and the actual reality of social robots, which may negatively impact the successful adoption and use.
Trust is a critical factor in the adoption of social robots. To tap into social robots' potential application use cases, we must develop a detailed understanding of the factors that affect trust between this emerging technology and its future users.
Method
We engaged the higher education community, students and staff through a design probe to identify potential applications and investigate related trust issues using Aldebaran's social robot Pepper, on the campus of University of Oulu in Finland. The survey was implemented with questionnaires, interviews and user observations.
Results
We found that participants value bringing social robots onto the campus and anticipate use-cases, and that certain contextual factors contribute to their willingness to become users of such systems.
Transparency is key: The issues most frequently raised by the participants were the transparency of the robot's programming and how that transparency is reflected in the robot's behaviour. The robot should clearly state what it will do and explain how it works.
Conclusion
In this study, we explored social robot application ideas and potential catalysts and issues in their future adoption. We discuss how introducing a robot to a heterogeneous and lively campus environment requires that the social robot's reason, purpose, and capabilities are communicated transparently, as part of deploying robots that should be trustworthy by design.
Citation
Published in: Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (OzCHI '25)
@inproceedings{10.1145/3764687.3764717,
author = {Szab\'{o}, D\'{a}niel and Visuri, Aku and Paananen, Ville and Handelage, Achira and Ravishan, Kavindu and Kirjavainen, Emma and Yatani, Koji and Hosio, Simo},
title = {Factors of Trust for Successfully Adopting Social Robots on the Campus},
year = {2025},
isbn = {9798400720161},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3764687.3764717},
doi = {10.1145/3764687.3764717},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction},
pages = {176–189},
numpages = {14},
keywords = {human-robot interaction, social robot, pepper, trust, public robot design for optimal reliance},
location = {},
series = {OzCHI '25}
}