LUCS seminar: April 16th at 10.15. Samantha Stedtler. “Time delays and Sociality in Human-Robot interaction”

Humans possess the ability to perceive and display communicative behavioral nuances which can be conveyed through timing and movements. Even slight hesitations or delays can carry significance depending on the surrounding context. Such pauses can have contradictory effects, by for instance negatively affecting perceptions of competence and predictability while in other cases enhancing user affinity by allowing time for comprehension. Among an array of nonverbal behaviors, eye-gaze stands out for its role in supporting communicative and social processes. Certain gaze patterns can be a sign of unexpected behavior or pauses, for instance gazing back at the robot's face if a response is expected but doesn’t occur. Moreover, individuals tend to alter the timing of their actions or movements in accordance with their interaction partner as a sign of sociality, as stated by the Temporal Behavior Matching Hypothesis.  

In this talk I will present results from a preliminary study on time delays in a human-robot interaction setting using the Wizard of Oz paradigm. Participants (n=17) played Tic-Tac-Toe with the humanoid robot Epi while being video-recorded. They were randomized into one of three groups, where Epi either executed its movements with no delay, a short delay (4s) or a long delay (10s). Results from questionnaires measuring fluency, trust and social attributes were compared before and after the interaction and between the different groups. Although there was evidence of decreased perceived fluency after delays, the difference between the groups did not meet the threshold for statistical significance. The latter is true for our other measures used. Suggestions are made in regards to how the study design could become more robust for a future, more large-scale study. 

In addition, I will present future directions which build on this preliminary study, such as conducting an analysis of participant behavior, more specifically gaze and movement patterns. Another potential direction I will talk about is considering blame attribution after time delays/ errors and the connection to perceived social identity