Agent-Based Simulation of Trust Development in Human-Robot Teams: An Empirically-Validated Framework

TL;DR

This paper introduces an empirically validated agent-based model in NetLogo that simulates trust dynamics, workload, and performance in human-robot teams, with validation against meta-analytic data and insights into trust calibration and factors affecting trust.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, empirically grounded agent-based framework for modeling trust development in human-robot teams, validated against meta-analysis and analyzing trust-performance relationships.

Findings

Robot reliability strongly influences trust and task success.

Trust asymmetry ratios are below meta-analytic benchmarks.

Scenario analysis reveals trust-performance decoupling and calibration errors.

Abstract

This paper presents an empirically grounded agent-based model capturing trust dynamics, workload distribution, and collaborative performance in human-robot teams. The model, implemented in NetLogo 6.4.0, simulates teams of 2--10 agents performing tasks of varying complexity. We validate against Hancock et al.'s (2021) meta-analysis, achieving interval validity for 4 of 8 trust antecedent categories and strong ordinal validity (Spearman \r{ho}=0.833\rho = 0.833 \r{ho}=0.833). Sensitivity analysis using OFAT and full factorial designs (n=50n = 50 n=50 replications per condition) reveals robot reliability exhibits the strongest effect on trust ({\eta}2=0.35\eta^2 = 0.35 {\eta}2=0.35) and dominates task success ({\eta}2=0.93\eta^2 = 0.93 {\eta}2=0.93) and productivity ({\eta}2=0.89\eta^2 = 0.89 {\eta}2=0.89), consistent with meta-analytic findings. Trust asymmetry ratios ranged from 0.07 to 0.55 -- below the meta-analytic benchmark of 1.50 -- revealing that per-event asymmetry does not guarantee cumulative asymmetry when trust repair mechanisms remain active. Scenario analysis uncovered trust-performance decoupling: the Trust Recovery scenario achieved the highest productivity (4.29) despite the lowest trust (38.2), while the Unreliable Robot scenario produced the highest trust (73.2) despite the lowest task success (33.4\%), establishing calibration error as a critical diagnostic distinct from trust magnitude. Factorial ANOVA confirmed significant main effects for reliability, transparency, communication, and collaboration (p<.001p < .001 p<.001), explaining 45.4\% of trust variance. The open-source implementation provides an evidence-based tool for identifying overtrust and undertrust conditions prior to deployment.