# Planning with Verbal Communication for Human-Robot Collaboration

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal framework for robots to decide when to perform tasks or communicate verbally with humans, enhancing collaboration and trust in human-robot teams.

## Contribution

It presents a novel formalism enabling robots to choose between acting and verbal communication, supported by human experiments demonstrating improved collaboration.

## Key findings

- Verbal commands significantly improve task coordination.
- Communicating reasons affects user trust and perception.
- Judicious use of explanations is necessary to maintain trust.

## Abstract

Human collaborators coordinate effectively their actions through both verbal and non-verbal communication. We believe that the the same should hold for human-robot teams. We propose a formalism that enables a robot to decide optimally between doing a task and issuing an utterance. We focus on two types of utterances: verbal commands, where the robot expresses how it wants its human teammate to behave, and state-conveying actions, where the robot explains why it is behaving this way. Human subject experiments show that enabling the robot to issue verbal commands is the most effective form of communicating objectives, while retaining user trust in the robot. Communicating why information should be done judiciously, since many participants questioned the truthfulness of the robot statements.