What Happens When Robots Punish? Evaluating Human Task Performance During Robot-Initiated Punishment

This article examines how people respond to robot-administered verbal and physical punishments. Human participants were tasked with sorting colored chips under time pressure punished by a robot when they made mistakes, such as inaccurate or too slowly. Participants either verbally being told stop for fixed time, physically, restraining their ability sort an in-house crafted robotic exoskeleton. Either human experimenter the exoskeleton administered punishments, participant task performance subjective perceptions of interaction recorded. The results indicate that more mistakes on threat punishment. also tended comply punishments at lesser rate than human-administered which suggests humans may not afford social authority administer study contributes our understanding compliance whether accept robot’s punish. influence design robots placed in authoritative roles promote discussion ethical ramifications