Believing in BERT: Using expressive communication to enhance trust and counteract operational error in physical Human-Robot Interaction

TL;DR

This study shows that expressive, personable robots in collaborative tasks improve user trust and interaction quality, even if they are less efficient, highlighting the importance of affective communication in human-robot collaboration.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that expressive communication in robots enhances trust and user engagement, challenging the focus on efficiency in robot design.

Findings

Expressive robots are preferred over more efficient, non-communicative ones.

Users may lie to avoid hurting a robot's feelings, indicating emotional engagement.

Expressive robots improve trust and interaction quality despite longer task times.

Abstract

Strategies are necessary to mitigate the impact of unexpected behavior in collaborative robotics, and research to develop solutions is lacking. Our aim here was to explore the benefits of an affective interaction, as opposed to a more efficient, less error prone but non-communicative one. The experiment took the form of an omelet-making task, with a wide range of participants interacting directly with BERT2, a humanoid robot assistant. Having significant implications for design, results suggest that efficiency is not the most important aspect of performance for users; a personable, expressive robot was found to be preferable over a more efficient one, despite a considerable trade off in time taken to perform the task. Our findings also suggest that a robot exhibiting human-like characteristics may make users reluctant to 'hurt its feelings'; they may even lie in order to avoid this.