How Should a Robot End Interaction with a User: Consideration from the Timing of Notice of Termination

Abstract

For a single robot providing some kind of service to respond to people efficiently, it is necessary to switch between the people it is attending to at appropriate timings, rather than spending a long time on a dialogue with one person. One way to achieve this switching is for the robot to proactively end the conversation itself, but people may feel discomfort when a robot unilaterally ends a conversation. This study investigated, through crowdsourcing, the timing at which a robot should give advance notice when it intends to end a conversation. The results showed that giving advance notice created a better impression than not giving notice, and that giving notice earlier in the conversation is preferable.