Would You Trust a (Faulty) Robot?

TLDR

Robot errors can undermine trust and acceptance in human‑robot collaboration. The study examines how perceived robot errors influence human willingness to cooperate and comply with its requests. Participants interacted with a home companion robot in either a correct or faulty mode to assess the impact of errors. Participants’ perceptions of reliability and trustworthiness were strongly affected by robot errors, yet compliance with requests remained largely unchanged; however, the task type—revocable versus irrevocable—significantly influenced willingness to follow instructions.

Abstract

How do mistakes made by a robot affect its trustworthiness and acceptance in human-robot collaboration? We investigate how the perception of erroneous robot behavior may influence human interaction choices and the willingness to cooperate with the robot by following a number of its unusual requests. For this purpose, we conducted an experiment in which participants interacted with a home companion robot in one of two experimental conditions: (1) the correct mode or (2) the faulty mode. Our findings reveal that, while significantly affecting subjective perceptions of the robot and assessments of its reliability and trustworthiness, the robot's performance does not seem to substantially influence participants' decisions to (not) comply with its requests. However, our results further suggest that the nature of the task requested by the robot, e.g. whether its effects are revocable as opposed to irrevocable, has a significant impact on participants' willingness to follow its instructions.