Bridging the Awareness Gap: Socially Mediated State Externalization for Transparent Distributed Home Robots

Abstract

Distributed multi-robot systems for the home often require robots to operate out of the user's sight, creating a state awareness gap that can diminish trust and perceived transparency and control. This paper investigates whether real-time, socially mediated state externalization can bridge this gap without compromising task performance. We developed a system where a co-located social mediator robot (Pepper) externalizes the hidden execution states of an out-of-sight mobile manipulator (Stretch~3) for voice-driven object retrieval and delivery, where task-level states are synchronized and externalized through verbal updates and visual progress display. In a counterbalanced within-subject study (N=30), we compared a baseline of Autonomous Hidden Execution against Socially Mediated State Externalization. Our results show that externalization significantly increases user task-focused attention (from 15.8% to 84.6%, p<.001) and substantially improves perceived perspicuity, dependability, stimulation, and attractiveness (all p<.001). Furthermore, 83% of participants preferred the externalized condition, and this improvement in user experience was achieved without a statistically significant increase in end-to-end task completion time (p=.271). The results suggest that socially mediated state externalization is an effective architectural mechanism for designing more transparent and trustworthy distributed robot systems, ultimately enhancing user experience without sacrificing performance in distributed home robot deployments.