Telenoid android robot as an embodied perceptual social regulation medium engaging natural human–humanoid interaction

•We present an analysis about the main features of human–humanoid interaction.•We conduct an extensive test with 142 people employing the Telenoid android robot.•The Telenoid is perceived as a cooperative agent for a shared environment.•Perception and believability make the Telenoid a socially acceptable robot.

The present paper aims to validate our research on human–humanoid interaction (HHI) using the minimalist humanoid robot Telenoid. We conducted the human–robot interaction test with 142 young people who had no prior interaction experience with this robot. The main goal is the analysis of the two social dimensions (“Perception” and “Believability”) useful for increasing the natural behaviour between users and Telenoid. We administered our custom questionnaire to human subjects in association with a well defined experimental setting (“ordinary and goal-guided task”). A thorough analysis of the questionnaires has been carried out and reliability and internal consistency in correlation between the multiple items has been calculated. Our experimental results show that the perceptual behaviour and believability, as implicit social competences, could improve the meaningfulness and the natural-like sense of human–humanoid interaction in everyday life task-driven activities. Telenoid is perceived as an autonomous cooperative agent for a shared environment by human beings.