Robot-Assisted Tower Construction—A Method to Study the Impact of a Robot’s Allocation Behavior on Interpersonal Dynamics and Collaboration in Groups

Abstract

Research on human-robot collaboration or human-robot teaming, has focused predominantly on understanding and enabling collaboration between a single robot and a single human. Extending human-robot collaboration research beyond the dyad, raises novel questions about how a robot should allocate resources among group members and about what the consequences of such allocation are for a group’s social dynamics and outcomes. Methodological advances are needed to answer these questions allow researchers to collect data about a robot’s impact not only on interactions with the robot but also on interactions of people with each other. This paper presents Robot Assisted Tower Construction, a novel task that allows researchers to examine the impact of a robot’s allocation behavior on the dynamics of a group or team collaborating on a task. By focusing on the question of whether and how a robot’s allocation of resources (wooden blocks required for a building task) affects collaboration dynamics and outcomes, a case is provided of how this task can be applied in a laboratory study with 124 participants to collect data about human robot collaboration that involves a group of people. We highlight the kinds of insights the task can yield and how it can be adapted to various human robot collaboration contexts.