Needy Robots - Designing Requests for Help Using Insights from Social Psychology

Current developments suggest that robots are finding increasing use in people's everyday lives and working environments. However, these environments have been made for humans and are characterized by continuous change. At present, equipping robots with all the necessary skills to perform tasks in these complex environments autonomously appears to be a major challenge. One solution is for the robot to ask for help in overcoming its limitations and fulfilling its tasks. The current literature suggests that some robots are more successful than others in terms of requesting help. Certain influencing factors regarding the effectiveness of a robot's request for help have already been identified, such as ambiguity and politeness. In social psychology, the topic of helping behavior is a subject of discussion under the term prosocial behavior. We therefore conducted a within-subject online experiment, studying the effectiveness of seven requests for help, all of which were derived from prosocial behavior theory. We also studied the effects of perceived politeness and perceived ambiguity. The results indicate that a request for help which is polite, but is not perceived as ambiguous, encourages the greatest degree of willingness to help. The implications for research, design, and theory are also discussed.