Can charismatic robots help teams be more creative?

Increasingly, social robots are being used for support in educational contexts. But does the sound of a social robot affect how well they perform, especially when dealing with teams of humans? Teamwork is a key factor in human creativity, boosting collaboration and new ideas. Danish scientists set out to understand whether robots using a voice designed to sound charismatic would be more successful as team creativity facilitators. "We had a robot instruct teams of students in a creativity task. The robot either used a confident, passionate -- ie charismatic -- tone of voice or a normal, matter-of-fact tone of voice," said Dr Kerstin Fischer of the University of Southern Denmark, corresponding author of the study in Frontiers in Communication.