In Gaze We Trust: Comparing Eye Tracking, Self-report, and Physiological Indicators of Dynamic Trust during HRI

Abstract

Technical advances in shared-space collaborative robotics have placed recent attention on trust in robots to ensure operator safety as well as to optimize human-robot interactions (HRI). Commonly measured using self-reports, our study explores if eye tracking or physiological indicators offer greater sensitivity in capturing dynamic trust during HRI. We investigated operators' trust dynamics (i.e., early and late trust build, breach, repair) across 2 different robot reliability levels (100% and 76% reliability). Trust ratings, fixation counts, and gaze transition entropy changed significantly between the late trust build and trust breach phases, while heart rate features did not change between any dynamic trust phases. Subjective trust ratings did not change between early and late trust build or between breach and repair phases, however, changes in stationary gaze entropy and gaze transition entropy across these phases were found to be sex-specific. Eye-tracking measures have the potential to complement, and in some cases replace, subjective trust ratings to uncover dynamic trust across diverse demographics during HRIs.