openalexScientific Reports2026-07-24
Exploring the role of a social robot in building a sense of connection
Allen Zhang, Yuki Okafuji, Kenya Hoshimure, Midori Ban, Hideyuki Takahashi, Takahisa Uchida, et al.
Abstract An important but under-explored use case for socially assistive robotics is in community formation. In this work, we conduct a novel investigation into the ability of a social robot to encourage human-human relationships among users. We conduct a between-subjects Wizard-…