Playing Pairs with Pepper
This addresses trust in human-robot interaction, which is important as robots become more prevalent, but it is incremental as it builds on existing research on anthropomorphism.
The paper investigated how robot anthropomorphism affects human trust by designing a matching game with two robots (Pepper and Husky) and using pre- and post-test questionnaires. Results showed a positive relationship, with 80% of participants confirming facial features helped establish trust and 90% confirming interaction increased trust.
As robots become increasingly prevalent in almost all areas of society, the factors affecting humans trust in those robots becomes increasingly important. This paper is intended to investigate the factor of robot attributes, looking specifically at the relationship between anthropomorphism and human development of trust. To achieve this, an interaction game, Matching the Pairs, was designed and implemented on two robots of varying levels of anthropomorphism, Pepper and Husky. Participants completed both pre- and post-test questionnaires that were compared and analyzed predominantly with the use of quantitative methods, such as paired sample t-tests. Post-test analyses suggested a positive relationship between trust and anthropomorphism with $80\%$ of participants confirming that the robots' adoption of facial features assisted in establishing trust. The results also indicated a positive relationship between interaction and trust with $90\%$ of participants confirming this for both robots post-test