Personal Safety is More Important Than Cost of Damage During Robot Failure

Abstract

As robots become more common in everyday life it will be increasingly important to understand how non-experts will view robot failure. In this study, we found that severity of failure seems to be tightly coupled with perceived risk to self rather than risk to the robot's task and object. We initially thought perceived severity would be tied to the cost of damage. Instead, participants placed falling drinking glasses above a laptop when rating the severity of the failure. Related results reinforce the primacy of personal safety over the financial cost of damage and suggest the results were tied to proximity to breaking glass. 1

Understanding and Resolving Failures in Human-Robot Interaction: Literature Review and Model Development

“…A robot's failure symptoms in the literature include the robot not completing a given task (e.g., Takayama et al, 2011 ; Rosenthal et al, 2012 ; Brooks et al, 2016 ; Robinette et al, 2016 ; Mirnig et al, 2017 ; Kwon et al, 2018 ), running into obstacles (e.g., Brooks et al, 2016 ), performing the wrong action (e.g., Kim et al, 2009 ; Lee et al, 2010 ; Desai et al, 2012 , 2013 ; Yasuda and Matsumoto, 2013 ; Kaniarasu and Steinfeld, 2014 ; Gehle et al, 2015 ; Mubin and Bartneck, 2015 ; Salem et al, 2015 ; Brooks et al, 2016 ; Hayes et al, 2016 ; Robinette et al, 2016 ; Mirnig et al, 2017 ; Sarkar et al, 2017 ; van der Woerdt and Haselager, 2017 ), performing the right action incorrectly or incompletely (e.g., Takayama et al, 2011 ; Shiomi et al, 2013 ; Cha et al, 2015 ; Hamacher, 2015 ; Brooks et al, 2016 ; Hamacher et al, 2016 ; Adubor et al, 2017 ; Sarkar et al, 2017 ; van der Woerdt and Haselager, 2017 ; Kwon et al, 2018 ), producing no action or speech (irresponsiveness) (e.g., Gieselmann, 2006 ; Lohan et al, 2014 ; Bajones et al, 2016 ; Robinette et al, 2016 ; Lucas et al, 2017 , 2018 ), timing speech improperly (e.g., Mirnig et al, 2017 ), failing to produce speech (e.g., Gieselmann and Ostendorf, 2007 ; Mirnig et al, 2017 ), producing inappropriate speech or erroneous instruction (e.g., Gieselmann, 2006 ; Gieselmann and Ostendorf, 2007 ; Short et al, 2010 ; Gehle et al, 2015 ; Gompei and Umemuro, 2015 ; Lucas et al, 2017 , 2018 ; Mirnig et al, 2017 ; Sarkar et al, 2017 ), repeating s...…”

“…Error recovery strategies and reactions to errors have been evaluated using surveys (e.g., Lee et al, 2010 ; Takayama et al, 2011 ; Cha et al, 2015 ; Brooks et al, 2016 ; Adubor et al, 2017 ; Kim et al, 2017 ; Rossi et al, 2017b ; van der Woerdt and Haselager, 2017 ; Kwon et al, 2018 ), video analysis of HRIs (e.g., Giuliani et al, 2015 ; Mirnig et al, 2015 ), and unstructured observational studies (e.g., Gieselmann, 2006 ; Gehle et al, 2015 ), however most studies used controlled user experiments (e.g., Spexard et al, 2008 ; Short et al, 2010 ; Desai et al, 2013 ; Salem et al, 2013 , 2015 ; Gompei and Umemuro, 2015 ; Knepper et al, 2015 ; Hayes et al, 2016 ; Ragni et al, 2016 ; Robinette et al, 2016 ; Mirnig et al, 2017 ; Lucas et al, 2018 ). One study introduced an idea on how to improve situation awareness (SA; see Comprehension and Memory section) in erroneous situations without any formal evaluation (Cassenti, 2007 ).…”

Human-Robot Similarity and Willingness to Work with a Robotic Co-worker

“…Robots are deployed to work with humans on tasks that often involve physical danger [9]. From a human worker's perspective, risks related to physical danger are often viewed as a more important motivator for working with robots than other types of risk (e.g., financial cost) [2]. This would suggest the need to investigate the risk of physical danger as a potential moderator in human-robot collaboration.…”

“…Prior researchers have paid little attention to the potential moderating role of risk in human-robot interaction (e.g., [19,26]). Yet, robots are often employed to perform very dangerous tasks [2,60]. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the degree of risk to physical danger could be important.…”

“…Second, we know very little about when such similarities are less important. More specifically, robots are often employed to perform very dangerous and in some cases undesirable tasks [2,21,60]. These tasks often have the potential to be physically harmful to humans.…”