Anthropomorphism and Human-Robot Interaction

Robots are fast becoming a part of everyday life. Indeed, robots are now deployed in retail stores (see Figure 1), warehouses, hospitals, factories, and so on to perform tasks conventionally done by humans. Nestlé uses a humanoid robot "Pepper" to sell coffee makers in department stores in Japan; people buy ice cream from a fully automated ice cream franchise, RoboFusion; Cobalt's KnightScope security robots patrol streets in New York City. Such encounters will only increase as the global market for service robots has grown exponentially, from 36.2 billion in 2022 to 103.3 billion by 2026.26 Humanoid'Pepper' has been deployed in many retail stores throughout Japan.20 According to a survey from McKinsey Global Institute, 15% of the global workforce, or 400 million workers, will be displaced by 2030.14