The Impact of Speech and Movement on the Interaction with a Mobile Hand Disinfection Robot

Hand disinfection is an important tool in the line of defense against infectious diseases. Hand sanitizer dispensers are usually passive devices sitting at entrances of buildings and other frequented locations. In this study we explore the usefulness of an interactive mobile hand sanitizer robot, more specifically, the research is focused on finding the most significant attention-grabbing modality for the robot to motivate people to disinfect their hands. Through an in -the-wild Wizard-of-Oz experiment and a short questionnaire each of the four usage modalities was tested in the entrance hall of a university. The results show that movement had the most significant impact, compared to sound and nothing at all, yet due to the robot's design the participants expected it to talk to them.