People favour expressive, communicative robots over efficient, effective ones

Making an assistive robot partner expressive and communicative is likely to make it more satisfying to work with and lead to users trusting it more, even if it makes mistakes, a new UCL-led study suggests. But the research also shows that giving robots human-like traits could have a flip side - users may even lie to the robot in order to avoid hurting its feelings. Researchers from UCL and the University of Bristol experimented with a humanoid assistive robot helping users make an omelette. The robot was tasked with passing the eggs, salt and oil but dropped one of the polystyrene eggs in two of the conditions and then attempted to make amends. The aim of the study was to investigate how a robot may recover a user's trust when it makes a mistake and how it can communicate its erroneous behaviour to somebody who is working with it, either at home or at work. The study suggests a communicative, expressive robot is preferable for the majority of users to a more efficient, less error-prone one, despite it taking 50 per cent longer to complete the task. Users reacted well to an apology from the robot that was able to communicate, and were particularly receptive to its sad facial expression.