Polite and Unambiguous Requests Facilitate Willingness to Help an Autonomous Delivery Robot and Favourable Social Attributions

Robots are increasingly involved in tasks that require them to navigate social spaces shared with humans. Following social norms is considered a key requirement for such robots to ensure their acceptance and long-term use. This paper focuses on delivery robots as these often encounter problems in their operational areas–in this case a busy university campus– when they find their way blocked by people and they cannot move on towards their goal destination. We explored automated cue triggering to resolve this situation autonomously without the help of remote operators. Eighty-three pedestrians participated in a real-world study using a delivery robot. Four different cues were tested for their perceived politeness and ambiguity. The four different cues differed in the presence or absence of an instruction and the presence or absence of a justification for the request to let the robot pass as well as source orientation within the justification, which was either internally (self-) directed or externally (user-) directed. The results reveal a complex picture. Overall, a positive effect of verbal instructions in comparison to staying mute on social attributions to the robot was found. Contrary to our expectations, there was no significant difference in politeness between the different requests. Participants’ willingness to let the robot pass was positively correlated with perceived politeness, and negatively correlated with ambiguity of the requests.