When May I Help You? On The Effect of Proactivity on Group Human-Robot Collaboration
For researchers designing collaborative robots, this work highlights that robot proactivity's effects depend on user traits and group dynamics, but the findings are incremental as they confirm known trade-offs without a breakthrough.
The paper investigates robot initiative in group human-robot collaboration, comparing reactive (responds only when addressed) vs. proactive (continuously listens and contributes) interaction models in an escape room task. The proactive model increased interaction frequency, while the reactive model achieved a higher success rate (92.86% vs. 71.42%), with effects modulated by participants' prior experience and personality.
Robot initiative is a central challenge in multi-party human-robot collaboration. A robot that contributes without being addressed may provide timely support, but it may also disrupt coordination, divide attention, or interrupt turn-taking; a robot that waits to be addressed may preserve human control, but it may also miss opportunities to assist. We investigate this design challenge in a collaborative escape room in which pairs of participants work with a humanoid robot under either a reactive interaction model, where the robot responds only when addressed, or a proactive model, where it listens continuously, contributes autonomously, and periodically re-initiates interaction. We evaluate both models using puzzle-solving performance, interaction frequency, and participant ratings on the Godspeed and RoSAS scales. The proactive model substantially increases interaction frequency, whereas the reactive model shows a descriptively higher overall success rate (92.86% vs. 71.42%). The strongest differences emerge when prior experience and personality are taken into account: participants with LLM experience solve the early puzzles faster in the reactive condition, and participants with prior robot experience show modified evaluations of proactive and reactive interaction as do introverted participants. These findings demonstrate that the effects of robot initiative are simultaneously shaped by users' prior experience, personality traits and more generally by the needs of the group.