Search papers, labs, and topics across Lattice.
This study investigates how different types of robot failures (manipulation slips, freezing lapses, and object/goal mistakes) impact a human's perceived reliability (PR) of the robot. Through an online video study where participants bet on a robot's success in a pick-and-place task after observing various failure scenarios, the research found that mistakes are less damaging to PR than slips or lapses. Furthermore, successful executions immediately following a failure fully recover PR, suggesting a path to trust recovery without explicit social repair.
Robot mistakes are surprisingly forgiving – humans penalize slips and freezes more harshly, and sometimes even interpret certain mistakes as successes.
Robots fail, potentially leading to a loss in the robot's perceived reliability (PR), a measure correlated with trustworthiness. In this study we examine how various kinds of failures affect the PR of the robot differently, and how this measure recovers without explicit social repair actions by the robot. In a preregistered and controlled online video study, participants were asked to predict a robot's success in a pick-and-place task. We examined manipulation failures (slips), freezing (lapses), and three types of incorrect picked objects or place goals (mistakes). Participants were shown one of 11 videos -- one of five types of failure, one of five types of failure followed by a successful execution in the same video, or a successful execution video. This was followed by two additional successful execution videos. Participants bet money either on the robot or on a coin toss after each video. People's betting patterns along with a qualitative analysis of their survey responses highlight that mistakes are less damaging to PR than slips or lapses, and some mistakes are even perceived as successes. We also see that successes immediately following a failure have the same effect on PR as successes without a preceding failure. Finally, we show that successful executions recover PR after a failure. Our findings highlight which robot failures are in higher need of repair in a human-robot interaction, and how trust could be recovered by robot successes.
