Do people change their behavior when the handler is next to the robot?

• Main Author: Sun, Yu-Wei
• Other Authors: Lesley Strawderman, Ph.D., P.E.
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: MSSTATE 2018
• Subjects: Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Online Access: http://sun.library.msstate.edu/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-02152018-152217/

It is increasingly common for people to work alongside robots in a variety of situations. When a robot is completing a task, the handler of the robot may be present. It is important to know how people interact with the robot when the handler is next to the robot. Our study focuses on whether handlers presence can affect humans behavior toward the robot. Our experiment targets two different scenarios (handler present and handler absent) in order to find out humans behavior change toward the robot. Results show that in the handler present scenario, people are less willing to interact with the robot. However, when people do interact with the robot, they tend to interact with both the handler and the robot. This suggests that researchers should consider the presence of a handler when designing for human-robot interactions.