The use of social robots in public facilities is increasingly being considered to reduce employees’ workload and requires citizens to engage in human-robot interactions. Based on the paradigm of Positive Computing , the motivation to interact with robots can be supported by increasing citizens’ well-being during the interaction. According to Self-determination Theory, this well-being depends on the satisfaction of people’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. However, a lack of research exists on the abilities of publicly used robots to address these needs, particularly regarding diverse audiences. To address this research gap, a field study was conducted in two public libraries ( N = 65), in which participants interacted with a social robot that recommended books and read passages from them aloud. Results reveal that people’s general attitudes toward robots were positively related to how well the robot satisfied needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness and showed that women felt less competent in the interaction than men. Interview data complement these findings by showing that insufficient responses and the robot’s rigid way of interacting are connected to a reduced perception of users’ competence. In contrast, a successful, easy interaction and responses to user input were described as reasons for increased perceptions of competence and autonomy, while relatedness was experienced as a difficult concept to grasp. Overall, these findings show that social robots in public places can satisfy users’ basic psychological needs and that user- and robot-related characteristics influence this satisfaction.

Conducting Virtual Reality (VR) studies in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) offers substantial benefits. Researchers use VR as a versatile research instrument, providing a controlled and reproducible study environment while enabling less invasive, continuous, and more valid data generation through measurement methods like motion capture and eye-tracking. Despite its potential, technical complexities and resource-intensive VR application development pose barriers to researchers, which may prevent them from using the advantages of VR for their own research. Our vision is to address this challenge by creating an intuitive VR authoring tool that facilitates the creation and execution of HRI study designs, considering that different disciplines may have varying requirements for studies. To enable broad usability of such a tool, we conducted expert interviews with seven HRI researchers, gathering insights into perceptions, opportunities, and risks associated with VR, and subsequently derived a catalog of requirements for the authoring tool. We evaluated the mockups resulting from these interviews at an international robotics conference with 22 experts, aiming to collaboratively develop a suitable authoring tool within the HRI community.

In the context of digitization and the COVID-19 pandemic, online teaching comes more and more into focus of higher education. Various online learning methodologies such as using videos as a teaching method are promising, but can also create problems in the area of social relations or learning habits. The concept of collaborative learning, especially in an online environment, could counteract these problems. This paper presents a collaborative online learning tool that allows students to get together in learning groups to watch educational videos together. Various functions, such as a chat, help students to communicate with each other. A psychological evaluation was conducted to investigate the effects on students. The evaluation demonstrated positive effects of the tool, since it enhances important psychological processes (like flow and cognitive load) within the learning process. Moreover, its usability was rated as good and participants showed a high usage intention for the tool. Nevertheless, further investigations in long-term learning courses are needed to finally confirm the tool’s effectiveness.