CRII: CHS: Examining and applying robot sociality to enhance intergroup human-robot interaction

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces NM

Investigators

Abstract

Robots are becoming increasingly common enhancements in people's lives. They tutor students, help around the house, work in factories, and more. For robotic technology to be the most helpful, it is important to learn how people best interact with it. In this project, the researchers apply theory of social psychology and group dynamics to improve human-robot teaming. Previous research has shown that humans work better with robots that they view as teammates (called 'ingroup') than robots that they view as opponents (called 'outgroup'). However, ingroup and outgroup are social categories, and it is not known how social a robot must behave to benefit from ingroup favoritism. Conversely, it is uncertain if nonsocial robots can avoid the drawbacks of being viewed as outgroup members. In this project, researchers will develop the understanding of these critical factors and apply them to real-world human-robot teams, such as for construction. This will promote the progress of psychological science, demonstrating how far principles of psychological group dynamics extend to nonsocial agents and when these principles break down. The results will lead to robot design recommendations to improve human-robot teaming. For example, this research might indicate that humans and machine-like robots can work most efficiently and smoothly together when the robots behave uniformly. To examine intergroup human-robot interaction, the researchers will set up cooperative and competitive contexts to elicit group effects and determine how social the robots must be to be treated like ingroup or outgroup members (Study 1). Then the researchers will determine if social group principles, such as entitativity (cohesiveness) of robot groups, affect interactions with them even when robots are nonsocial (paralleling factory-created construction robots in the real world; Study 2). Because human groups will interact with robots (e.g., family members interacting with a home robot, a construction crew), the researchers will examine how human group type (e.g., friend, coworker) affects responses toward the robots (Study 3). Because groups are more competitive than individuals, the researchers will examine one-on-one contact with robots before group interaction with them to reduce prejudice against them (Study 4). Finally, the researchers will apply their research findings from Studies 1-4 to the real world and the introduction of construction robots with their collaborators from the College of Engineering (Study 5). This research will lay the foundation for understanding group dynamics in human-robot interaction. Based on the findings, the researchers will provide design recommendations about what robot form and intragroup behavior will be best suited for intergroup interaction. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.