Investigating Customers’ Perceived Sensitivity of Information Shared with a Robot Bartender

Personalised experiences with service robots positively affect people’s perception of the robot and, consequently, foster the success of the interaction. This implies that people need to share their personal information with the robot, which could let people feel uneasy when such interactions happen in public spaces or in the presence of strangers. Therefore, it is difficult for a service robot to personalise a human-robot interaction (HRI) when this can lead to a breach of privacy. As a first step, the current study investigated people’s perception of the sensitivity of various categories of potentially private personal information that are likely to be used by a service robot in a public business, such as a bar. We conducted a questionnaire-based study, where participants rated 15 personal information that they could share with either a human or robot bartender. The potentially private information was rated by participants according to their level of sensitivity. We analysed responses from 76 participants. We clearly identified information that are perceived as highly sensitive, such as those related to a person’s identity (e.g. sexual orientation, political beliefs), and as low in sensitivity, such as those related to personal interests (e.g. sports, TV shows). Our findings also showed that older people consider sharing their preference of drinks more sensitive than younger people, especially when the bartender is a robot. We did not find significant differences in users’ ratings due to their gender.