HRI Users' Studies in the Context of the SciRoc Challenge: Some Insights on Gender-Based Differences

In this paper, we present the outcomes of the first user study designed and evaluated in the context of the Smart City Robotics Challenge (SciRoc Challenge). The study presented in this paper has the main novelty of having been devised and implemented in a realistic environment: a robot competition where robot tasks were developed by participant teams, robots were fully autonomous, and user questionnaires were part of the competition score. Specifically, our study was performed over a scenario configured to instruct a robot to take an elevator of a shopping mall asking for customers support. Leveraging the dedicated questionnaire designed for the tested scenario, we validated the experimental hypothesis if user perception of robots' behaviour may be influenced by the user's gender. In the end, we discuss the results of our study.