Forging Productive Human-Robot Partnerships Through Task Training

Productive human-robot partnerships are vital to successful integration of assistive robots into everyday life. While prior research has explored techniques facilitate collaboration during interaction, the work described here aims forge productive drawing upon team building activities’ aid in establishing effective human teams. Through a 2 (group membership: ingroup and outgroup) × 3 (robot error: main task errors, side no errors) online study ( N = 62), we demonstrate that 1) non-social pre-task exercise can help form relationships; 2) an robot is perceived as better, more committed teammate than outgroup (despite two behaving identically); 3) participants tolerant negative outcomes when working with robot. We discuss how exercises may serve active failure mitigation strategy.