Despite obesity being widely discussed in the social sciences, the effect of a robot's perceived obesity level on trust is not covered by the field of HRI. While in research regarding humans, Body Mass Index (BMI) is commonly used as an indicator of obesity, this scale is completely irrelevant in the context of robots, so it is challenging to operationalize the perceived obesity level of robots; indeed, while the effect of robot's size (or height) on people's trust in it was addressed in previous HRI papers, the perceived obesity level factor has not been addressed. This work examines to what extent the perceived obesity level of humanoid robots affects people's trust in them. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a within-subjects study where, using an online pre-validated questionnaire, the subjects were asked questions while being presented with two pictures of humanoids, one with a regular obesity level and the other with a high obesity level. The results show that humanoid robots with lower perceived obesity levels are significantly more likely to be trusted.

翻译：尽管肥胖问题在社会科学领域被广泛讨论，但机器人感知肥胖程度对信任的影响尚未在人机交互（HRI）领域得到研究。在针对人类的研究中，身体质量指数（BMI）通常被用作肥胖的指标，但这一标准在机器人语境中完全不适用，因此如何量化机器人的感知肥胖程度具有挑战性；事实上，虽然以往的人机交互论文已探讨过机器人尺寸（或高度）对人们信任度的影响，但感知肥胖程度这一因素尚未被涉及。本研究旨在探究人形机器人的感知肥胖程度在多大程度上影响人们对它们的信任。为验证这一假设，我们进行了一项被试内实验：通过一份经过预先在线验证的问卷，向受试者展示两张人形机器人图片（一张呈现常规肥胖程度，另一张呈现高肥胖程度）并询问相关问题。结果表明，感知肥胖程度较低的人形机器人获得信任的可能性显著更高。