Signal or 'Noise': Human Reactions to Robot Errors in the Wild

TL;DR

This study investigates how people react socially to robot errors in real-world settings, revealing that social signals are diverse and often noisy, especially in group interactions, which impacts error management strategies.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into human social responses to robot errors outside lab environments, highlighting the complexity and variability of social signals in natural HRI contexts.

Findings

Participants expressed varied social signals in response to errors.

Social signals are rich but often noisy in real-world interactions.

Group interactions amplify the diversity of social responses.

Abstract

In the real world, robots frequently make errors, yet little is known about people's social responses to errors outside of lab settings. Prior work has shown that social signals are reliable and useful for error management in constrained interactions, but it is unclear if this holds in the real world - especially with a non-social robot in repeated and group interactions with successive or propagated errors. To explore this, we built a coffee robot and conducted a public field deployment ($N = 49$). We found that participants consistently expressed varied social signals in response to errors and other stimuli, particularly during group interactions. Our findings suggest that social signals in the wild are rich (with participants volunteering information about the interaction), but "noisy." We discuss lessons, benefits, and challenges for using social signals in real-world HRI.