Beyond Task Performance: Human Experience in Human-Robot Collaboration

TL;DR

This study explores how different automation levels in human-robot collaboration impact psychological experiences like flow, sense of agency, and embodiment, highlighting the importance of human-centric automation design.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on how automation levels influence human experience metrics and introduces grip force as a potential real-time proxy for sense of agency.

Findings

Medium automation levels enhance flow, SoA, and embodiment.

Higher automation improves task performance but reduces perceived agency.

Grip force correlates with sense of agency in real-time.

Abstract

Human interaction experience plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of human-machine collaboration, especially as interactions in future systems progress towards tighter physical and functional integration. While automation design has been shown to impact task performance, its influence on human experience metrics such as flow, sense of agency (SoA), and embodiment remains underexplored. This study investigates how variations in automation design affect these psychological experience measures and examines correlations between subjective experience and physiological indicators. A user study was conducted in a simulated wood workshop, where participants collaborated with a lightweight robot under four automation levels. The results of the study indicate that medium automation levels enhance flow, SoA and embodiment, striking a balance between support and user autonomy. In contrast, higher automation, despite optimizing task performance, diminishes perceived flow and agency. Furthermore, we observed that grip force might be considered as a real-time proxy of SoA, while correlations with heart rate variability were inconclusive. The findings underscore the necessity for automation strategies that integrate human- centric metrics, aiming to optimize both performance and user experience in collaborative robotic systems