Probing Social Aspects of Human-Robot Group Interaction in a Collaborative Game

We present an experimental testbed for probing social aspects of human-robot group interaction using a collaborative game. Our testbed, Sheep and Wolves, allows a human user to play as a game piece, with a group of robots as peers, all engaged in collaborative gameplay on a large physical game board, using mixed reality and cartoon artbased techniques to communicate and discuss moves. The paper argues the importance of controlled experimental testbeds in the development of future social human-robot interfaces, and motivates the research goal of understanding group effects within a collaborative group composed of humans and robots. The paper then discusses the design and implementation of the second iteration our testbed, Sheep and Wolves, and its successful use in an extensive user study. The paper concludes with the current preliminary analysis of our experimental results, and our planned future work on Sheep and Wolves.