Well done, Robot! The importance of praise and presence in human-robot collaboration

Abstract

This study reports on an experiment in which participants had to collaborate with either another human or a robot (partner). The robot would either be present in the room or only be represented on the participants' computer screen (presence). Furthermore, the participants' partner would either make 20 % errors or 40 % errors (error rate). We automatically measured the praising and punishing behavior of the participants towards their partners and also asked the participant to estimate their own behavior. The participants unconsciously praised Aibo more than the human partner, but punished it just as much. Robots that adapt to the users' behavior should therefore pay extra attention to the users' praises, compared to their punishments