Eyes on you: field study of robot vendor using human-like eye component “Akagachi”

Eye gaze is an important non-verbal behavior for communication robots as it serves as the onset of communication. Existing communication robots have various eyes because design choices for an appropriate eye have yet to be determined, so many robots are designed on the basis of individual designers’ ideas. Thus, this study focuses on human-like eye gaze in a real environment. We developed an independent human-like eye gaze component called Akagachi for various robots and conducted an observational field study by implementing it to a vendor robot called Reika. We conducted a field study in a theme park where Reika sells soft-serve ice cream in a food stall and analyzed the behaviors of 984 visitors. Our results indicate that Reika elicits significantly more interaction from people with eye gaze than without it.