Laughing Together: A Desktop Social Robot as an Icebreaker for First-Meeting

This study explores the potential of social robots as icebreakers during first-time encounters between strangers, aiming to address common issues of social awkwardness that may hinder meaningful interactions. We designed and implemented LMAO, a desktop social robot (as shown in Fig. 1), which uses laughter as a non-verbal, emotionally contagious signal to intervene during conversation breaks. Through a user study involving 20 participants in group discussions, we examined whether the robot's laughter could enhance social engagement by increasing smile frequency and verbal contributions. The results indicated that compared to the control group with no robot intervention, the group with LMAO exhibited significantly higher levels of smiling and verbal output. Our findings suggest that context-aware robotic laughter can effectively reduce subjective feelings of awkwardness and facilitate smoother social initiation, highlighting the potential of social assistive robots in fostering human connection.