System Development and Evaluation of a Social Robot as a Public Speaking Coach

Presentation rehearsal is an essential activity that significantly impacts the quality of presentation delivery, especially for novice presenters, such as university students. However, rehearsals are often not done appropriately, or lack constructive feedback. To encourage effective presentation rehearsal, we devised a system involving a social humanoid robot acting as a public speaking coach, analyzing students’ presentations and providing feedback. We monitored acoustic aspects of speech, speech prosodies, and eye contact maintenance during presentations. Our aim was to assess robot acceptance, participants’ sense of interpersonal closeness with the robot, and perceived human nature attributes of the robot. This study presents the system development, followed by evaluations with 50 university students, as well as an evaluation by a public speaking coach. We found that the students, on average, gave high acceptance scores for the robot and reported moderate interpersonal closeness with the robot, and attributed human nature attributes to it. Additionally, an expert public speaking coach found the system to be able to provide reliable and relevant feedback to students considering their performance, and he also gave useful insights on potential improvements of the system.