TRUST AND THE DISCREPANCY BETWEEN EXPECTATIONS AND ACTUAL CAPABILITIES OF SOCIAL ROBOTS

Abstract

From collaborators in factories to companions in homes, social robots hold the promise to intuitively and efficiently assist and work alongside people. However, human trust in robotic systems is crucial if these robots are to be adopted and used in home and work. In this chapter we take trust to be a set of expectations about the robot’s capabilities and explore the risks of discrepancies between a person’s expectations and the robot’s actual capabilities. We examine major sources of these discrepancies and ways to mitigate their detrimental effects. No simple recipe exists to help build justified trust in human-robot interaction. Rather, we must try to understand humans’ expectations and harmonize them with robot design over time.