(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-07)
Xu, Jin; Howard, Ayanna M.
Socially interactive humanoid robots have been widely used in physical therapy and rehabilitation for children with motor disabilities. Previous studies have shown that embedding human-like behavior on a robotic playmate improves the efficacy of the physical therapy through corrective feedback. Understanding of trust in such scenarios is especially important since the behavior of the robot impacts the outcomes of the interaction through changes of trust, thus affecting rehabilitation performance. The objective of this pilot study was to examine aspects of trust between humans and socially interactive humanoid robots when robots provide incorrect personal information about them. A between-subject experiment was conducted with eight participants. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of the following conditions: 1) Reliable robot or 2) Faulty robot. Survey responses about trust were collected after interacting with the robot. Results indicate a trend showing that humans will trust a socially interactive robot with their personal information, even if the robot makes a mistake. These results can provide insights into the development of a robotic therapy coach but also motivates future studies to examine elements of human-robot trust in different healthcare scenarios.