Abstract:

Just as humans are imperfect, even the best of robots will eventually fail at performing a task. The likelihood of failure increases as robots expand their roles in our lives. Although task failure is a common problem in robotics and human-robot interaction (HRI), there has been little research investigating human tolerance to said failures, especially when there is a risk of property damage and bodily harm. Safety is an important concern for human-robot interaction, and robot designers need to understand how people calibrate their levels of trust and adapt their behavior around robots that could expose them, and property, to physical harm. To explore this issue, we performed an experiment where people were exposed to failure in a real-life study with actual personal and property risk. Participants observed a Baxter robot while it performed a grocery packing task, and were given opportunities to react to and assist the robot in multiple failure cases. The study revealed important factors that influence trust, perception of safety, and whether participants would assist the robot after witnessing failure. Findings from this study will help the research community and future robot designs.

Committee:

Aaron Steinfeld (Chair)

Jodi Forlizzi

Zhi Tan