Biblio
Trust is a critical issue in human-robot interactions (HRI) as it is the core of human desire to accept and use a non-human agent. Theory of Mind (ToM) has been defined as the ability to understand the beliefs and intentions of others that may differ from one's own. Evidences in psychology and HRI suggest that trust and ToM are interconnected and interdependent concepts, as the decision to trust another agent must depend on our own representation of this entity's actions, beliefs and intentions. However, very few works take ToM of the robot into consideration while studying trust in HRI. In this paper, we investigated whether the exposure to the ToM abilities of a robot could affect humans' trust towards the robot. To this end, participants played a Price Game with a humanoid robot (Pepper) that was presented having either low-level ToM or high-level ToM. Specifically, the participants were asked to accept the price evaluations on common objects presented by the robot. The willingness of the participants to change their own price judgement of the objects (i.e., accept the price the robot suggested) was used as the main measurement of the trust towards the robot. Our experimental results showed that robots possessing a high-level of ToM abilities were trusted more than the robots presented with low-level ToM skills.
Embodiment of actions and tasks has typically been analyzed from the robot's perspective where the robot's embodiment helps develop and maintain trust. However, we ask a similar question looking at the interaction from the human perspective. Embodied cognition has been shown in the cognitive science literature to produce increased social empathy and cooperation. To understand how human embodiment can help develop and increase trust in human-robot interactions, we created conducted a study where participants were tasked with memorizing greek letters associated with dance motions with the help of a humanoid robot. Participants either performed the dance motion or utilized a touch screen during the interaction. The results showed that participants' trust in the robot increased at a higher rate during human embodiment of motions as opposed to utilizing a touch screen device.
With recent advances in robotics, it is expected that robots will become increasingly common in human environments, such as in the home and workplaces. Robots will assist and collaborate with humans on a variety of tasks. During these collaborations, it is inevitable that disagreements in decisions would occur between humans and robots. Among factors that lead to which decision a human should ultimately follow, theirs or the robot, trust is a critical factor to consider. This study aims to investigate individuals' behaviors and aspects of trust in a problem-solving situation in which a decision must be made in a bounded amount of time. A between-subject experiment was conducted with 100 participants. With the assistance of a humanoid robot, participants were requested to tackle a cognitive-based task within a given time frame. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of the following initial conditions: 1) a working robot in which the robot provided a correct answer or 2) a faulty robot in which the robot provided an incorrect answer. Impacts of the faulty robot behavior on participant's decision to follow the robot's suggested answer were analyzed. Survey responses about trust were collected after interacting with the robot. Results indicated that the first impression has a significant impact on participant's behavior of trusting a robot's advice during a disagreement. In addition, this study discovered evidence supporting that individuals still have trust in a malfunctioning robot even after they have observed a robot's faulty behavior.