Attitudes towards Humanoid Robots for In-Home Assistance

Humanoid robots are the latest bet of the robotics community in advancing ways robots carry out a large variety of tasks that generate profit or increase quality of life for people. While their capabilities might extend to assistive care tasks, such as feeding, dressing, or household tasks, it is unclear if people are comfortable with having humanoid robots in their homes assisting with those tasks. In this paper we explore people's attitudes towards assistive humanoid robots in the the home. We present two questionnaire studies, with 76 total participants, in which people are shown imaginary images of humanoid robots performing assistance tasks in the home, along with special purpose robot alternatives. Participants are asked to rate and compare robots in the context of eight different tasks and share their reasoning. The second study also shows participants pictures of real humanoid robot both without any context and in the context of in-home assistance tasks, and asks their opinions about these robots. Our findings indicate that people prefer special purpose robots over humanoids in most cases and their preferences vary by task. Although people think that humanoids are acceptable for assistance with some tasks, they express concerns about having them in their homes.