Design of a Robotic Workmate

摘要

In the near future, robots and people will work hand in hand. Through technical development, robots will be able to follow social rules, interact and communicate with people and move freely in the environment. The number of these so-called social robots will increase significantly especially in production spaces forming hybrid human-robot-teams. This expected increasing integration of robots in production environments raises questions on how to design an ideal robot for hybrid collaboration. While most of the research focuses on the technical aspects of human-machine interactions, there is still a strong need for research on the psychological and social aspects that influence the cooperation within hybrid teams. In addition to existing research work, the present research project investigates how the appearance and accuracy of a robot influences the outcomes of a collaborative task (i.e. performance, perceived team functionality and trust) within a Wizard-of-Oz experiment, which was set in a virtual reality setting. One major finding was that the accuracy of the robot influenced the level of trust, faulty robots were perceived as less trustworthy. Furthermore, the appearance of the robots influenced the perceived team functionality and the collaborative performance. Industrial robots led to a higher task reflexivity and performance. The results will help to improve the future designs of robots, focusing on psychological needs of the human partners.