Excluded by RobotsA Human-Robot-Robot Interaction study
Excluded by Robots
Interest in integrating social and personal robots in our daily lives has been growing over the years. It is believed that various autonomous devices will be common in homes and workplaces in the near future, interacting with humans and each other. In this study, we aimed to explore and compare situations that involve different levels of involvement of humans in Robot-Robot interactions, ranging from excluding the human from the interaction to include and over-including the human in the interaction. We test the effect on the human's emotions and perception of the devices.
In the study, we used a well-known paradigm from social psychology called CyberBall. We designed a catch (throwing a ball to one another) interaction between one person and two non-humanoid robots. The proportion of tosses from the robot's towards the participant will determine the level of the human's involvement in the interaction. We measured the involvement's influence on the participant's feelings related to ostracism, mood, and perception of the robots.
We Got In! 馃弳
The article was formally accepted to the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2021) and got an average score of 4.8 out of 5!
Excluded by Robots, in Motion
Process
I was the Project Manager of the project. My team included two psychology students, a computer science student, an animator, an industrial designer, and academic advisors.I managed the project from the beginning, planning this project, through the design process of the system, conducting experiments and interviews with participants, and up to writing an academic paper for the HRI 2021 conference.
- 01Design and conduct experiments: My team develops and design the system, including 3 robots, the experiment settings, and a simple UI control for the user. The research includes different methods as semi-structured interviews, anonymous multi-choice questioners. Collecting data, interview transcripts, and analyzing qualitative data using thematic coding methods
- 02Responsible for the research team: Conducting and managing the research and the team, including the definition of timetable, goals for every step, and supervision on the whole process
- 03Involvement in writing an academic paper: Including literature reviews and a deep understanding of the CyberBall paradigm. Writing specifically the Findings chapter and dividing the qualitative findings into themes.
Interviews
During the discovery phase of my project, I conducted user interviews with 40 participants to better understand how they felt during the experience.
Describe what happened in this experience.
How did you you felt during the experiment?
Did you feel that the game was fair?
What role/part did you take in the game?
Some of the participants before you described their experience as a positive one, and others described it negatively. What is your opinion?
What have I learned from this project?
In this project, I learn a lot about research, user testing, and to manage a team:
- 01How to manage a team with people from different backgrounds and roles.
- 02How to work with software engineers and industrial designers.
- 03How to design a system and to think about every single scenario that can happen.
- 04How to interview users and try to lead the conversation to the subject that matters to me.
The Full Article
Excluded by Robots: Can Robot-Robot-Human Interaction Lead to Ostracism? Published in the Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
Want to hear the longer version?
I'm happy to walk you through the study, the findings, and what I'd do differently.