Investigating Taste-liking with a Humanoid Robot Facilitator

Tasting is an essential activity in our daily lives. Implementing social robots in the food and drink service industry requires the social robots to be able to understand customers’ nonverbal behaviours, including taste-liking. Little is known about whether people alter their behavioural responses related to taste-liking when interacting with a humanoid social robot. We conducted the first beverage tasting study where the facilitator is a human versus a humanoid social robot with priming versus non-priming instruction styles. We found that the facilitator type and facilitation style had no significant influence on cognitive taste-liking. However, in robot facilitator scenarios, people were more willing to follow the instruction and felt more comfortable when facilitated with priming. Our study provides new empirical findings and design implications for using humanoid social robots in the hospitality industry.