Native Czech speakers consider English-speaking robots more intelligent

It seems intuitive that a social robot should communicate in the native language of the user. On the other hand, English has become lingua franca among scientific research groups. We conducted a study to see whether native Czech speakers (fluent in English) prefer to interact with a robot in English or in Czech. We found that our participants perceived an English-speaking robot as more intelligent than a Czech-speaking robot. However, those who had previous experience with robots perceived a Czech-speaking robot to be safer.