The Effects of Gender and Placebic Messaging on Robot-Guided Emergency Evacuation
Open Access
- Author:
- Mc Farland, Ciera
- Millennium Scholars Program:
- Aerospace Engineering (AERSP)
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisor:
- Alan Richard Wagner, Thesis Supervisor
Katie Fitzsimons, Advisor - Keywords:
- Social Robotics
Robot Evacuation
Explanations
Gender - Abstract:
- Evacuation robots have the potential to prevent dangerous bottlenecking at exits during emergencies, potentially saving lives. However, these robots must compel a person to follow their instructions. The goal of this study was to consider how the gender of a robot’s verbalizations and the nature of its message impacts whether or not people follow it rather than a crowd of people. This experiment utilized sounds in both the robot’s messaging and the environment to create a more realistic scenario. Participants followed a robot through an office space within a simulation. During the emergency, the robot played a male or female audio message asking if the person wanted to follow it with no explanation, a placebic explanation, or a helpful explanation. Simulated people ran one way while the robot moved in the opposite direction. A siren sounded, and a timer counted down to increase the sense of urgency. While it was believed that any explanation would cause more people to follow the robot, no message seemed to have a greater influence than any other. Contrary to other studies, male participants did not favor either robot, while female participants slightly favored the male-voiced robot. The presence of audio in multiple places had a significant influence over behavior, causing a greater number of people to ignore the robot’s guidance than was expected.