The Influence of Demographic Variation on the Perception of Industrial Robot Movements
Damian Hostettler
TL;DR
The paper investigates how demographic variation affects perception of industrial robot movements by integrating a systematic literature review with a large web-based experiment using UR10e videos to test five MoveTypes. Across 930 participants, the study finds a general preference for side approach, large movement range, conventional rotations, and smooth movements, with speed preferences roughly balanced. Demographic factors largely do not overturn the majority preferences, though age and gender show modest effects on speed perception; location and experience also modulate specific MovTypes. The findings contribute to understanding how to design industrial robot movements that support acceptance and safety without compromising efficiency, and highlight limitations of online observational methods while pointing to directions for real-world, dynamic assessments. Overall, the work advances comprehension of how static demographic characteristics influence perception of non-humanoid industrial robot movements and suggests practical guidance for operator-facing robot control in manufacturing settings.
Abstract
The influence of individual differences on the perception and evaluation of interactions with robots has been researched for decades. Some human demographic characteristics have been shown to affect how individuals perceive interactions with robots. Still, it is to-date not clear whether, which and to what extent individual differences influence how we perceive robots, and even less is known about human factors and their effect on the perception of robot movements. In addition, most results on the relevance of individual differences investigate human-robot interactions with humanoid or social robots whereas interactions with industrial robots are underrepresented. We present a literature review on the relationship of robot movements and the influence of demographic variation. Our review reveals a limited comparability of existing findings due to a lack of standardized robot manipulations, various dependent variables used and differing experimental setups including different robot types. In addition, most studies have insufficient sample sizes to derive generalizable results. To overcome these shortcomings, we report the results from a Web-based experiment with 930 participants that studies the effect of demographic characteristics on the evaluation of movement behaviors of an articulated robot arm. Our findings demonstrate that most participants prefer an approach from the side, a large movement range, conventional numbers of rotations, smooth movements and neither fast nor slow movement speeds. Regarding individual differences, most of these preferences are robust to demographic variation, and only gender and age was found to cause slight preference differences between slow and fast movements.