Including Social Expectations for Trustworthy Proactive Human-Robot Dialogue

摘要

Trust forms an important factor in human-robot interaction and is highly influencing the success or failure of a mixed team of humans and machines. Similarly, to human-human teamwork, communication and proactivity are one of the keys to task success and efficiency. However, the level of proactive robot behaviour needs to be adapted to a dynamically changing social environment. Otherwise, it may be perceived as counterproductive and the robot’s assistance may not be accepted. For this reason, this work investigates the design of a socially-adaptive proactive dialogue strategy and its effects on humans’ trust and acceptance towards the robot. The strategy is implemented in a human-like household assistance robot that helps in the execution of domestic tasks, such as tidying up or fetch-and-carry tasks. For evaluation of the strategy, users interact with the robot while watching interactive videos of the robots in six different task scenarios. Here, the adaptive proactive behaviour of the robot is compared to four different levels of static proactivity: None, Notification, Suggestion, and Intervention. The results show that proactive robot behaviour that adapts to the social expectations of a user has a significant effect on the perceived trust in the system. Here, it is shown that a robot expressing socially-adaptive proactivity is perceived as more competent and reliable than a non-adaptive robot. Based on these results, important implications for the design of future robotic assistants at home are described.