Robot's Inner Speech Effects on Trust and Anthropomorphic Cues in Human-Robot Cooperation
This addresses the problem of improving human-robot trust and cooperation in collaborative settings, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing concepts of transparency and anthropomorphism.
The study investigated whether programming a robot with overt self-talk to simulate human inner speech enhances human trust and anthropomorphism during cooperation, finding that participants' trust levels and perception of robot anthropomorphic features increased after interaction.
Inner Speech is an essential but also elusive human psychological process which refers to an everyday covert internal conversation with oneself. We argue that programming a robot with an overt self-talk system, which simulates human inner speech, might enhance human trust by improving robot transparency and anthropomorphism. For this reasons, this work aims to investigate if robot's inner speech, here intended as overt self-talk, affects human trust and anthropomorphism when human and robot cooperate. A group of participants was engaged in collaboration with the robot. During cooperation, the robot talks to itself. To evaluate if the robot's inner speech influences human trust, two questionnaires were administered to each participant before (pre-test) and after (post-test) the cooperative session with the robot. Preliminary results evidenced differences between the answers of participants in the pre-test and post-test assessment, suggesting that robot's inner speech influences human trust. Indeed, participant's levels of trust and perception of robot anthropomorphic features increase after the experimental interaction with the robot.