Achieving Fluency through Practice in Human-Robot Collaboration: Effects on Efficiency, Fluency, and Attitude toward Robotic Teammates

We have developed a cognitive architecture for a robotic teammate based on the neuro-psychological principles of perceptual symbols and simulation, with the aim of attaining increased fluency in human-robot teams. An instantiation of this architecture was implemented on a robotic desk lamp, performing in a human-robot collaborative task. This paper describes initial results from a human-subject study measuring team efficiency and team fluency, when the robot works on a joint task with naı̈ve subjects. We find a significant difference in a number of efficiency and fluency metrics, when comparing our architecture to a purely reactive robot with similar capabilities. We also report significant differences in a number of self-report metrics, as well as differences in verbal attitudes towards the robot.