When giving directions to a lost-looking tourist, would you first reference the street-names, cardinal directions, landmarks, or simply tell them to walk five hundred metres in one direction then turn left? Depending on the circumstances, one could reasonably make use of any of these direction giving styles. However, research on direction giving with a robot does not often look at how these different direction styles impact perceptions of the robots intelligence, nor does it take into account how users prior dispositions may impact ratings. In this work, we look at generating natural language for two navigation styles using a created system for a Furhat robot, before measuring perceived intelligence and animacy alongside users prior dispositions to robots in a small preliminary study (N=7). Our results confirm findings by previous work that prior negative attitudes towards robots correlates negatively with propensity to trust robots, and also suggests avenues for future research. For example, more data is needed to explore the link between perceived intelligence and direction style. We end by discussing our plan to run a larger scale experiment, and how to improve our existing study design.

翻译：在为迷路的游客指路时，你会优先提及街道名称、基本方位、地标，还是直接告诉他们沿某个方向走500米再左转？根据具体情况，这些指路方式各有其适用性。然而，现有关于机器人指路的研究很少关注不同指路风格如何影响人们对机器人智能的感知，也未考虑用户先入为主的倾向可能如何影响评分。本研究基于为Furhat机器人开发的系统，生成了两种导航风格的自然语言文本，随后通过一项小规模初步实验（N=7），测量了感知智能度、活力感以及用户对机器人的先入倾向。实验结果证实了先前研究的结论：对机器人的负面态度与对机器人的信任倾向呈负相关，并提出了未来研究方向。例如，需要更多数据以探究感知智能度与指路风格之间的关联。最后，我们讨论了开展更大规模实验的计划，以及如何优化现有研究设计。