Challenges in Collaborative HRI for Remote Robot Teams

TL;DR

This paper discusses challenges in remote human-robot collaboration, proposing a mediator robot with social skills to build trust, and presents initial findings on how control levels influence supervisor trust in high-stakes environments.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of a mediator robot with social skills to enhance trust in remote robot teams and investigates how control levels affect supervisor trust.

Findings

Supervisors trust more when initial control is handed over in emergencies.

The mediator robot can exhibit social skills to improve collaboration.

Identifies key challenges and interaction techniques in remote HRI.

Abstract

Collaboration between human supervisors and remote teams of robots is highly challenging, particularly in high-stakes, distant, hazardous locations, such as off-shore energy platforms. In order for these teams of robots to truly be beneficial, they need to be trusted to operate autonomously, performing tasks such as inspection and emergency response, thus reducing the number of personnel placed in harm's way. As remote robots are generally trusted less than robots in close-proximity, we present a solution to instil trust in the operator through a `mediator robot' that can exhibit social skills, alongside sophisticated visualisation techniques. In this position paper, we present general challenges and then take a closer look at one challenge in particular, discussing an initial study, which investigates the relationship between the level of control the supervisor hands over to the mediator robot and how this affects their trust. We show that the supervisor is more likely to have higher trust overall if their initial experience involves handing over control of the emergency situation to the robotic assistant. We discuss this result, here, as well as other challenges and interaction techniques for human-robot collaboration.