Pamela J. Hinds, Teresa L. Roberts,
Hank Jones
Human-Computer Interaction, Volume
19, 2004
Summary
Human Robot cooperation is growing more and more
and researches have supposed that humans may prefer working with human-like
robots than machine-like, although, according to the authors, no test has been
down up to the paper’s date (2004). The paper researches links with human
likeness, status (subordinate, peer or supervisor) and dimensions. Today
researches are divided mainly in two “team”, according to Brooks [2002],
humanoids will have better communication chances than machine-like robots,
while opponents believe that humanoid features may result in unrealistic
expectations and in some cases even fear. In this research the case of
underreliance is faced, being proved (Gawande, 2002) that people tend to resist
technologies that are programmed to augment human decision making. Another
aspect covered in this research is the level of responsibility that people
assume for a certain task in certain conditions and with a certain robot
cooperator.
The authors performed
statistical test on 5 hypothesis: 1a) People rely on human-like robot partner
more than a machine-like one; 1b) People
will feel less responsible for the task when collaborating with a human like
robot partner than a machine-like one; 2a) People will rely on the robot
partner more when its characterized as a supervisor than when it is
characterized as a subordinate; 2b) People will feel less responsible for a
task when collaborating with a robot partner who is a supervisor than with a
robot partner who is a subordinate or a peer; 3) People will feel the greatest
amount of responsibility when collaborating with a machine-like robot
subordinates as compared with machine-like robot subordinated. To test the
tree hypothesis the researchers performed experiments to verify human likeness
and status influence in human perception, the robot was operating in Wizard of Oz conditions (teleoperated)
without the people performing been told.
The experiments have been
performed with a the same robot, once wearing human-like features such as nose,
ears, mouth and eyes been demonstrated (Di Salvo, Gemperle, Forlizzi and
Kiesler, 2002) that there are the characteristics that most affect perception
of human-likeness; the status has been previously communicated to the testers
through written instruction (as been successfully done previously by Sande,
1986).
The experiment analyzed,
through videotapes analysis, the attribution of credit and blame, specially
using the concept of shared social identity analyzing the language used by the
testers while working together with the robot.
Key
Concepts
Human-Robot Cooperation,
Team-working, Humanoids, Robot impact on humans
Key Results
The results have shown
multiple aspects, first of all, not unexpected is the preference humans have in
working with other humans rather than robots, but the difference regarding
responsibility, attribution of blame and attribution of credit appears to be
not statistically significant, as for the difference between human-like robot
and machine-like robot. Hypothesis 1a and 1b appear therefore to be confirmed. It
is interesting to notice how users tend communicated more with machine-like
robots, since people perceive less common ground between themselves and the
robot (Fussel & Krauss, 1992). Also it has been proved that people relied
more on a peer robot than a subordinate or supervisor robot (when the robot is
a supervisor then humans tend to blame the mistakes and attribute to themselves
the success) and people feel much more responsible for the task when
cooperating with a machine-like robot. This results suggests that the
appearance of the robot is important according on the degree of responsibility
required, when it’s needed to have more options then it would be better to have
a machine-like robot (Robert et al., 1994), in the case of high hazardous
environment and risk then humanoids may be a good choice so that people may
delegate easily responsibilities to them.
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