Current and Future Medical Professionals’ Attitudes towards Humanoid Robots

The scope of robot applications has been widening rapidly across the globe in recent areas. With
extended deployment of robots in the healthcare industry, it is critical to understand the attitudes of
medical professionals towards using robots in various health-related contexts. Particularly, human-like
robots are used in several healthcare settings including therapy, service, and care-taking. Hence,
knowing the opinions of doctors about humanoid robots may highlight opportunities for robot-assisted
healthcare setup and related research activities. Furthermore, current medical students’ opinions may
also provide extensive knowledge to predict the future potentials of such robots in healthcare settings.
This paper describes the results of a study conducted to evaluate current and future medical
professionals’ attitudes towards humanoid robots using the 30-item Frankenstein Syndrome
Questionnaire (FSQ). This scale assesses attitudes towards humanoid robots in terms of five factors,
namely general negative attitudes, general positive attitudes, principle objection, trust in humanoid
robot creators, and interpersonal fears. We sampled doctors from several specializations and
students in third- and fourth-year medical school in India. From each group, 125 participants
responded to the questionnaire. The results show that the current medical professionals generally had
more positive but also more negative attitudes towards humanoid robots. This result may be
explained by the fact that the types of attitudes measured in the FSQ are not necessarily expressing
directly opposite views. Future psychometric work is required to explore the validity and reliability of
the scale for use in Indian samples.