Actions speak louder than looks: Does robot appearance affect human reactions to robot protest and distress?

Abstract

People will eventually be exposed to robotic agents that may protest their commands for a wide range of reasons. We present an experiment designed to determine whether a robot's appearance has a significant effect on the amount of agency people ascribed to it and its ability to dissuade a human operator from forcing it to carry out a specific command. Participants engage in a human-robot interaction (HRI) with either a small humanoid or non-humanoid robot that verbally protests a command. Initial results indicate that humanoid appearance does not significantly affect the behavior of human operators in the task. Agency ratings given to the robots were also not significantly affected.