Tell me more: Designing HRI to encourage more trust, disclosure, and companionship

Abstract

Previous HRI research has established that trust, disclosure, and a sense of companionship lead to positive outcomes. We explored improving these aspects of HRI through robot behavior. Specifically, we increased the expressivity and vulnerability of a robot and measured the effects on trust, disclosure, and companionship during human-robot interaction. We engaged (N = 61) high school aged students in a 2 (vulnerability of robot: high vs. low) × 2 (expressivity of robot: high vs. low) between-subjects study where participants engaged in a short electronics learning activity with a robotic tutor. Our results show that students had more trust and feelings of companionship with a vulnerable robot, and reported disclosing more with an expressive robot. This video highlights some of the qualitative interactions students had with the robot as well as a discussion of their experiences around trust, disclosure, and companionship with the robot. The video clips of student interactions show how vulnerability and expressivity can be used to engender trust, disclosure, and companionship between a person and robot.