Effects of anticipatory action on human-robot teamwork efficiency, fluency, and perception of team

  • Authors:
  • Guy Hoffman;Cynthia Breazeal

  • Affiliations:
  • MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA;MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

A crucial skill for fluent action meshing in human team activity is a learned and calculated selection of anticipatory actions. We believe that the same holds for robotic teammates, if they are to perform in a similarly fluent manner with their human counterparts.In this work, we propose an adaptive action selection mechanism for a robotic teammate, making anticipatory decisions based on the confidence of their validity and their relative risk. We predict an improvement in task efficiency and fluency compared to a purely reactive process.We then present results from a study involving untrained human subjects working with a simulated version of a robot using our system. We show a significant improvement in best-case task efficiency when compared to a group of users working with a reactive agent, as well as a significant difference in the perceived commitment of the robot to the team and its contribution to the team's uency and success. By way of explanation, we propose a number of fluency metrics that differ significantly between the two study groups.